The combination of pandemic food shortages and severe global economic downturn has nearly one sixth of the world’s population going to bed hungry every night, according to a United Nations report. An increasing number of experts believe that the greatest global threat is no longer war or disease, but hunger.

As a result of the economic crisis, the World Bank estimates that 90 million more people will be driven to extreme poverty by the end of next year, and that 59 million more will lose their jobs this year. In light of rising food prices, these statistics are particularly grim.

In the United States, a combination of biofuel subsidies and record rainfall has experts worried.

In 2007, Jean Ziegler, the UN’s independent expert on the right to food, called biofuels “a crime against humanity” because they have sent food prices soaring, and created food shortages that leave millions of poor people hungry. “The effect of transforming hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tons of maize, of wheat, of beans, of palm oil, into agricultural fuel is absolutely catastrophic for the hungry people,” he told a news conference.

Despite food riots in several poor nations in the last year, President Obama has left the Bush administration’s biofuel policies intact. The subsidy of 45 cents per gallon is still in effect. Since May, U.S. biofuel refineries have set new production records every month. This year, almost one third of U.S. corn, amounting to 12 percent of the total global yield, will be diverted into ethanol for fuel.

At the same time criticism of the biofuel policy is rising, the U.S. is experiencing record-breaking precipitation, preventing the harvesting of grain.

October 23 was memorable for meteorologists of St. Louis, Missouri, when 1.91 inches of rain fell at Lambert Airport, boosting October 2009 into the record books as the wettest October in recorded St. Louis history. A similar scenario is playing out in East Texas and elsewhere with no relief in sight.

Dow Jones reported that most sections of the U.S. grain belt have received more than twice their normal amount of precipitation this month, which is causing unprecedented delays in harvesting the U.S.’s two most important cash crops: corn and soybeans. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s harvest figures from October 26 said that half of the nation’s top-producing corn states still had upward of 90 percent of their corn and half of their soybeans standing in the field because of the excessive rain.

“You can’t find a year in usda’s data (which goes back to 1972) on corn harvest activity that is as slow as this year [20 percent complete]. Period,” said Pro Farmer News editor Roger Bernard. The damage is so severe that some producers are harvesting what is left of their crops with a plow, instead of a combine.

In regard to the increasing global demand for grain, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote about how people in China and Southeast Asia are switching to animal protein diets as their incomes increase. He pointed out that it takes 3 to 5 pounds of animal feed from grains to produce 1 pound of meat.

To compound the problem, since 2000 China has lost almost 1,400 square miles to desertification each year. In the east, fertile land is being paved over for development. In its depleted state, the Yellow River flows into the sea less than half the days of the year. In some areas, farmers are having to drill up to 1,000 meters into non-replenishable reserves to find water.

The Middle East and North Africa have already entered into dangerous territory regarding food production. The region lacks water to boost its production, and currently imports 71 percent of its rice and 58 percent of its corn.

Prices appear fairly stable at present, but threats approach from many directions. The world could be one drought, or flood, or fire away from skyrocketing food prices.

To understand the magnitude and gravity of the coming crises, read “Sleepwalking Into a Food Nightmare,” and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.