I think the root cause of the food price hike around the world is the ongoing turbulence in crude oil price. It happened due to a chain of events. If we trace the events then we could link it to the war in Iraq. The ever increasing demand of fuels to support the growth in China and India is the other major factor.
In one hand, the war constrained the supply and growth in China and India raised the demand, on the other. To battle the shortage, everybody is searching for other sources of energy. Higher crude oil price showed economic viability of some alternative energy sources. The USA, like EU and other nations, found some alternative sources. Biodiesel is showing some potential. A significant amount of corn went into biodiesel production. The USA used to provide 70 per cent of the world demand of corn; now 30 per cent of that is being diverted to energy production.
Moreover, the higher market price of oil makes it more profitable for the farmer to produce corn for energy solution. This created a short supply in the food cereal market and there was no additional supply to mitigate that. Because the developing countries did not anticipate this series of events, they could not fill the gap with wheat or rice. To make the situation even worse, the higher transportation cost pushed the market price of wheat and rice even higher.
Farmers in the developed countries are motivated to switch to corn production due to the demand of alternative fuel sources. Today, more lands are producing corn than ever before. The USA, EU and other developed countries should evaluate the situation and act urgently to correct it. If they fail to do so, more people will die due to hunger in this 21st century and that would be a shame for the entire human civilisation.
This post may also be seen at the Daily New Age news paper in Bangladesh:http://www.newagebd.com/2008/apr/25/fb.html
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