Anatomy Of A Food Price Spike  

Sustainablog has a look at the latest spike in food prices - Anatomy Of A Food Price Spike.

I have been posting updates on the most recent, global food price spike since February 2011 – most recently in June. Yesterday, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) released its most recent data on the prices of food in international trade. As seen in the graph above, the overall index and its various components have declined slightly, but remain at very high levels.

People living in the developed world have seen some food price increases, but because we grow so much of our own food and spend a small part of our income on feeding ourselves, the impact is minor. This has the greatest effect on the lives of poor people in import-dependent countries.

What is actually most unsettling about this phenomenon is that nothing like it has occurred for decades, and yet we are in a second such spike. The first was in 2007/8, and the current spike has been in 2010/11.
Source: sustainablog (http://s.tt/13sjc)