[from UVa News Services, by Jane Ford]: Since mid-April, when the World Food Program declared a global food price crisis, the ripples of the so-called "silent tsunami" have been felt across the globe.

There have been riots over the cost of food in Somalia and Egypt. Haiti's prime minister was forced to resign by legislators seeking to quell violent protests over rising food costs. And here in the United States, rising global grain prices helped spark the largest increase in monthly food costs in nearly 20 years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics described the 0.9 percent rise between March and April as the biggest since January 1990.

Tanya Denckla Cobb, senior associate at U.Va.'s Institute for Environmental Negotiation, views the world's food crisis as less of a shortage and more of a problem of food distribution. "People on plant Earth produce more than enough food to feed all of our planetary tenants, but we have not yet learned how to distribute our harvest in an equitable way that gives affordable and meaningful access to all."

The Center for Global Health recently funded Denckla Cobb's spring course, "Healthy Communities, Healthy Food Systems: Global-Local Connections." She and Tim Beatley, the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, led students in a novel endeavor to figure out where Charlottesville's food comes from, be it local or from thousands of miles away. Students conducted nine different case studies to discern how to better balance global and local supplies. At the end of the semester, the students presented their findings at Charlottesville's City Hall. [for complete article, follow link embedded in headline]