New information coming in from the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization which concern world food prices now show that they rose in September.

This information also reveals that, these prices are close to levels reached during the 2008 food crisis.

That organization also recounts that, “…The worst drought in more than 50 years in the United States sent corn and soybean prices to record highs over the summer, and, coupled with drought in Russia and other Black Sea exporting countries, raised fears of a renewed crisis…”
This – in turn – finds expression reflected mainly in higher dairy and meat prices, with more contained increases for cereals.

As the FAO also suggests, “Prices are remaining high… prices are sustained, it’s highly unlikely we will see a normalization of prices anytime soon…”

In recent-times past, rising food prices sparked riots in any number of poor countries; inclusive of Haiti.

Only time will tell what is in the cards for a Bahamas where practically all of the food we consume is imported from the United States of America; and so, we are fully persuaded that, if food prices continue to rise we can expect some national backlash.

Even now – there is in the air a rancid whiff of catastrophe.

Note well: – That the price of food, the price of electricity, the price of gasoline and the price of housing and that for practically everything we consume should be cause for serious concern on the part of the few who are charged with making decisions germane to the well-being of the many who now live in today’s crime-ridden Bahamas.

The poorest of the poor now live in a world where some of them routinely ‘feast’ off food-fragments left in garbage bins and dumpsters outside some of this island’s restaurants and fast-food joints.

Evidently, there is no sight as pathetic as that jarring tableau featuring this or that distressed person diving head-first into a garbage dumpster in search of his daily bread.

Today we report that there is an untold but numerically significant crew of indigent Bahamians who are homeless, jobless and who live off discarded food.

In other words, things have come to such a low place where Bahamians are living off refuse discarded by their so-called ‘Christian’ neighbors.

This crying shame speaks volumes not only about the numbers of men and women who are ‘out-of-it’; but also speaks shame and disgrace on the shoulders of state agencies and operatives who could seem to care less about such instances of human suffering now running amok.

Indeed, we have heard it said by any number of social service workers that, current policy and procedures are so designed that many who could benefit are deliberately being kept out of sight and therefore out of mind.

This crew includes some of the walking wounded; men and women who – while ambulatory – are nursing this or that mental illness, who have been abandoned by their families and who are hardly ever seen or helped by any of this nation’s religious.

Unlike any number of people in any number of countries who have made it their business to help the poor in their midst; today’s hard-working Bahamian and their more affluent fellows routinely turn a blind eye to the plight of the poorest of the poor.

These ‘poorest’ of the poor would include any number of people who have been reduced to wandering the streets because they have no home and because [in the vast majority of such cases] are suffering with or from this or that serious mental disease.

Sadly, these people are not only stigmatized by many in community; but also find that, they are often totally neglected by those people in the community who package and sell charity.

Simply put, these lost souls are left – like fruit on the vine – rotting for want of proper attention.

This is shame and disgrace distilled down to their quintessence.

The question, then, remains, what is to be done?

Here we also suspect that most of this nation’s religious, pastors and others such would readily agree with the proposition that, they are called to remember and make good of the seven practices of charity, based on Christ’s prophecy of the Last Judgment.

Be reminded, therefore, that the Christian is called and required to feed the hungry; give drink to the thirsty; clothe the naked; shelter the homeless; visit the sick; visit those in prison and to bury the dead.

Actions such as these are today greatly needed in today’ sin-ravaged and crime-infested Bahamas.