Fueled by continued growth and prosperity, the world’s food shortage has been likened to a war for survival. Now officially in its second year, the ‘war’ has turned into a real conflict with big casualties on all sides.

The huge demand for bio-fuels has turned corn-fields from producing foodstuff to producing the inputs to the ethanol process. The result: less corn and wheat for humans.

Clean water has become increasingly expensive and rare. The result: Far higher prices or acute shortages where free market systems are not applied.

Increasing wealth has changed lifestyles in all buoyant countries. Consumption is growing at unprecedented rates. The result: higher prices and food shortages. In the past decade the price for pork has increased three-fold in China. Consumers are now fighting over scarce rice resources across Asia.

People are turning on each other. In Malaysia a stampede killed more than 100 people. Cairo and Johannesburg have been hit too. Asian estimates stated the current rice shortage at 30%.

Global warming and erratic weather patterns have destroyed the productive capacity of farms over the past years. Farmers say it hasn’t been this bad for more than a century.

China’s gradual economic takeover of Indonesia is now being called an “invasion” and conflicts between locals and the invasion force are now a daily occurrence. Indonesia’s primarily Chinese ‘Peace Police’ are said to have killed more than 100,000 locals who objected to food and water rationing.

In the EU food prices have risen by 250% over the past five years. China’s new appetite for milk-based products has not allowed EU farmers production capacity to cope. And, China still doesn’t produce enough food to feed itself, nor will it in the next decade.

Some say that WW3 has just begun. And it’s all about food and water.