This experiment, that is this blog, is an eyeopener. I haven't read so much news in years. When I read something I like in the Times, I look around to see what I could have otherwise known.
Today's story on the drought in China was excellent. It reported that the Chinese government had issued warnings about the drought on Monday, and that was followed by warnings from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/business/global/09food.html
It's a scary story, scary enough to explain why many people avoid the news altogether. But so far, what it's got is news aggregation.
I started looking into it and it didn't take long before I started feeling really bad. The Times story today spared us the worst. A summary of the food crisis in Reuters about 10 days ago caught me up on the failures in the Russian harvest, problems in Australia and Argentina. Paul Krugman's column two days ago gave much perspective on the danger of this year's global bad weather. But neither one of those articles seem to have read a report from the BBC a few days before the Reuters article. It quotes the People's Daily on the crisis in China:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12266435
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An update: There was some rain in these grain-growing areas of China, and the immediate problem for the Chinese and the international grain market is alleviated. But food prices are still extremely high.
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