At the mercy of rising food prices

Speculation in commodity markets has been blamed for adding to the recent surge in world food prices, which is painful for businesses and consumers alike.

Michel Ghanjar had a tough call, as he decided when to break some extremely bad news to his boss at the headquarters of Takoradi Flour Mills, in the Ghanaian capital Accra.

As the operations manager processed the books for the previous month’s wheat shipment, he found the company lost the equivalent of $250,000 (