Rising prices threaten millions with starvation, despite bumper crops

There has never been anything remotely like the food crisis that is now increasingly gripping the world, threatening millions with starvation. For it is happening at a time of bumper crops.

All the familiar signs of impending disaster are here, and in spades. Across the developing world already hungry people are now having to eat even less. Food stocks have plunged to record lows. Food prices have scaled new heights. Food riots are spreading around the globe. Yet the world is still harvesting record amounts of grain.

Three times over the past 60 years prices have soared in the same way. But each was the result of poor harvests, and each was reversed when good crops returned. This crisis is being caused not by shrinking supplies but by skyrocketing demand.

The Independent