Endless Appetites: How the Commodities Casino Creates Hunger and Unrest

CHAPTER 5

The View from Rome

Josette Sheeran is in her office in Rome, where she really doesn't spend much time. It's late January in 2011, and she's about to leave for the World Economic Forum in Davos, where national leaders will express concern for the troubles arising in North Africa and the Middle East, including the role that food may have played in the crises. She attends G-20 and G-8 meetings, she speaks at humanitarian conferences, and she always carries a red cup, which she uses to remind people of those whose lives are ended, ruined, or stunted by hunger. She travels to villages, in Niger and Pakistan and El Salvador, investigating hunger's causes, monitoring successes in the fight against it, and figuring out how the agency she leads, ...