Out of Luck

While world leaders are beginning to recognize that food prices around the globe are soaring, agricultural research budgets are still being slashed, reports the New York Times. The United States has cut, by 75 percent, its $59.5 million support to a global research network that works on improving crops grown in poor countries. One of those research centers, the International Rice Research Institute, has had its budget cut in half since the 1990s and has been unable to develop the rice strains they found that are resistant to the brown plant hopper, an insect destroying crops in East Asia.