Food commodities have become items of speculative profit taking in major markets around the World. A lot of people have made a lot of money on them. Just like cheap oil, the age of cheap food is over.
It is the beginning of the growing season in the Western hemisphere, with a late Spring following a cold Winter. Crops won't be in for months. Rice prices have tripled in the last year. They will probably triple again in the next year, maybe even by next fall.
Many of the world's poor spend most of their income on food and the fuel to cook it. They weren't getting enough to eat last year, when both items cost a third of what they do today. They are having to sell everything they own to continue to eat. The governments of their countries are doing the same thing, stockpiling supplies of food grains, even at ruinously inflated prices, so that they will have food to sell their citizens. To do this, they are deferring public works and capital improvements. They are emptying the treasuries. Hungry citizens are not docile citizens.
Everybody agrees that rising food costs are a long term problem but nobody's talking about what they are going to do next year. Getting through this year is going to be hard enough.
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