Priya Haji, a Hindu-Muslim immigrant is the founder of World of Good Inc., and enterprise focused on sweat-free, eco-friendly, fair tarde products, as outlined in a recent MSNBC article. These products include things like scarves, beads, beaded jewelry, and woven baskets.

After studying abroad, Haji decided to help out various artisans she met throughout her travels. Wolrd of Good is now the first online, fair-trade enterprise. Background is provided on where each product, which is given a minimum bidding price, is coming from. The customers get to see and understand directly who produces the product ad the impact they are making by purchasing it.

Another countrygreatly effected by the food crisis is Afghanistan. As mentioned in a recent MSNBC article, many Afghan citizens can be found rummaging through garbages or even paying for food scraps and leftovers. The cost of basic foods such as wheat have gone up 75 percent in only three months. The number one fear concernign the rising prices, is that it may boost Taliban recruitment.

Because the Afghan government is backed by the United States, citizens are blaming the US. The prices of food have only risen since we came into the picture. The pverty has even reached some middle-class citizens. The death toll is expected to rise not due to starvation, but due to diseases cause by starvation and malnutrition.

It is also stated in the article, that due to Afghansitans high dependendy on foreign aid and exports, they are being hit the worse with the food crisis. Their main source of food imports in Pakistan is suffering on its own, leaving Afghanistan to fend for itself.

Today, a major victim of our global food crisis is Africa’s own Zimbabwe, as outlined in a recent CNN article. The malnutrition and starvation of thousands in Zimbabwe is also contributing to their horrific cholera outbreak. The outbreak has reached such a fatal level due to the massive poverty in Africa and the inability of its citizens to reach a health center. This poverty, much like the food crisis, is also caused by the practices of globalization, like foreign aid.

This outbreak began back in August, as water has become more and more contaminated throughout homes in Zimbabwe. Nurses and doctors are beginning to protest due to the lack of medical equipment and major political leaders are accusing Zimbabwe’s government.

There is not an answer in sight but with the help of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization, we can only hope to cure this outbreak and prevent it from happening again in the future.

As the economic crisis becomes the number one concern by most American citizens, Obama addresses his plans to relieve the situation as outlined in a recent CNN article. With thousands and thousands of job losses throughout the country, a solution is desperately needed. Through his plans, Obama plans to creat 2.5 million, much-needed jobs.

He plans, by upgrading all parts of the country to have access to the internet, to easily create avaialbe jobs for many American citizens. A recent Department of Labor report showed the number of job losses hit 533,000 in November alone. The entire year saw a loss of 1.9 million jobs. The unemployment rate has been its highest in fifteen years.

Hopefully, with time, strategy, effort and a strong leader we can find our way out of the mess we have fallen into. Obama stated that he needs Americans to rise to his proposal. “We need action — and action now,” he said.

In a recent Fox article, a speech given by President Bush in late October is covered. Bush discusses our constant obligation to provide aid for developing nations. The policies and beliefs that President Bush follows are all under the Millenium Challenge Account which provides aid to countries that have democracy, invest in education and health, and most of all are within the free market.

As far as loans go under Bush’s list of given “aid,” billions and billions of dollars has been spread across the map. These loans include: $16 billion for food, $1 billion for water sanitation, and $5.5 billion for means of addressing the global food crisis.

Although this money may help developing nations for a short amount of time, in the long run it only creates mroe poverty when they are unable to pay any of the money back. In turn, if a country refuses to pay back their loans, the World Bank may fine them even more. This creates more inquality on a global scale and fuels practices and institutions of globalization such as the race to the bottom and the development and sustainabilty of sweatshops.

In a recent Fox News article, Julie Watson discusses the need for a second revolution to solve the issue of the world’s food crisis. Sixty years ago, the green revoltuion began, creating more dependable, “hardier” seeds. Now as the hunger situation worsens, populations is outtrunning and nearly lapping food production. For example, Food production in Africa increases 2 percent a year while population grows 3 percent. Costs of fertilizers have sky rocketed and as global warming becomes more of an issue, climate change is causing drought.

Now the issue doesn’t only involve increasing food production as it did when the original green revolution was introduced. There are many more factors that need to be addressed in order to create the ability to make more food. Many predict another famine within 50 years, so the solution must be sustainable.

Many are attempting to not only aid larger farms, but also small local farms as well. In places like Africa and India, entire towns depend on these small farms and without their successful production, the hunger crisis is fueled.

Dublin was the recent meetingplace of experts from Africa, Europe, and the US recently to discuss possible solutuions to the hunger crisis, says a recent Fox News article. The issue is involving the poor economy and high unemployment in America. As our economy weakens, hunger in other nations increases. Experts are expecting major neglect of the poor due to the fact that most people need to focus their finances on themselves and their families.

One of these experts believe that if you have enough to money to keep yourself alive and healthy, at least one precent of your finances should be donated to the needy. If this were to occur, the crisis could easily fix itself. Other suggestions include buying food from local African farmers to help them buy expensive necessities to sustain their crops.

The bottom line is that no one thinks we are capable of putting aside money for those who need it while we are worried for our own situations. We have let our economy get to the point of crisis and now we are even less capable of helping anyone else but ourselves.

In a recnt CNN article, Cheif Alessio Vinci covers the advances made to prevent the food crisis in major parts of the world. More than $1 billion of emergency aid has been given. United Nation delegates have now vowed to ninvest in smaller local farmers in hopes of keeping food prices low. They have also suggested donating fertilizer, seed, and other various essentials to the upkeep of farm life. They hope to reach a goal of a 50 percnet increase in food production by 2030.

It seems that there is finally an understanding that aid is only good for short term help. The UN directly addressed that other solutions need to be made to fix the crisis for good.

However there are still many issues that need to be solved. The UN failed to comment on their solutions for escelating food prices, trade barriers, and farm subsides. These three issues are the largest determining factors in the world food crisis and without a reasonable solution to those, the larger problem will never be solved.

Food prices soar in Phillipines

Sweatshops are often difficult to distinguish from regular factories due to the disguises made by those who run them. In a recent CNN article,  Laura Batchelor covers the investigation performed by the New York Labor Department of a garment factory company with sweatshop wages and working conditions. This factory produced merchandise for companies such as Macy’s and the Gap. The New York Labor Department stated that 100 employees were underpaid by approximately $3 million in the last three years.

Many factory supervisors force their workers to lie to investigators regarding their hourly wage and the amount of hours they work. Workers are often told that the factory will fail without their lies, leaving them unemployed. In this specific case, the workers were forced to follow a “cheat sheet” that covered lines to recite to investigators. There were two separate time cars that employees were to fill out, one starting on Monday, and the other on Wednesday. When labor investigators asked for these cards, they were presented with only one.

In a recent CNN video, the growing costs and the negative outcome of globalization are covered. In this video, statistics show the distaste that American citizens hold for large, multinational corporations. This, I believe is showing the slow progress the world is making to reverse the process of globalization.

The rising inequality between citizens is clearly visible throughout the world and The American middle class is discovering that their jobs are at risk. Peter Marichi, a labor economist from the University of Maryland addresses the exact issues and future costs of free trade in the video. As our job security is threatened, citizens are unable to provide education for their children, in turn effecting our economy in generations to come.

Rajeev Dhawan, another economist interviewed in the video, believes that free trade has more benefits than costs and that we simply see the costs more. He also believes that free trade provides jobs for people who would normally not be able to work. He also believes that because of the low requirements for employment in sweatshops and factories, large corporations are actually helping developing nations. But due to the amount of time and effort that is put into these factories, the wages and working standards are still not up to par.

Steadily, people are beginning to understand the issues that free trade is causing for our world. We, as consumers are a large aspect of the trade process, so as we decide to address the costs we can together make a difference.