Oscar García Muñoz, follow it on other blogs here .
Gold price meals
Prices of staple foods such as cereals, reached unprecedented levels in 2008, with peaks exceeding, for example, $ 2,200 per bushel (1 bushel = 4.6 dm ³) in April 2008 compared to $ 1,200 today paid in the commodities market in Chicago , or $ 800 for corn in July, compared with the current $ 350. Prices moderated but still remain at high levels. The trend will not improve, according to a report published last year that the FAO, the UN agency for agriculture, and the OECD, one of the clubs of the world's wealthiest countries.
There has been a basic economic reason: the mismatch between supply and demand, caused by a series of bad harvests in some of the farms in the world (as the Black Sea and Australia) coupled to increased demand from India and China , especially of cereals for animal feed. However, there are other causes have also added fuel to the fire. The support of the former Government of the United States to growing corn for biofuels triggered the prices of this cereal and shifted production of many lands to this product for energy purposes, when part of the staple diet in South America and one of the key products to animal feed. On the other hand, speculation played a role, but has not been as intense as it is conceivable that comment from the think-tank specializing in agricultural policies IFPRI , but coincided with increased turnover of raw materials, which were funds fleeing the stock.
However, there is a serious problem that must be considered: the restoration of strategic reserves. For example, the European Union canceled at the beginning of the century in the process of elimination of the intervention mechanisms of the Common Agricultural Policy currently accumulated food can meet the needs of a few weeks and bonus policy of "zero stock" . Any catastrophic event would generate an upward spiral of prices or the difficulty of supply. The dialectic of recent years called for an end to intervention in markets to make them the same forces themselves who determine prices. This neoliberal logic is being questioned with the current crisis and there have been voices advocating re-impose trade barriers or restrictions, as happened last year in Southeast Asia and Argentina. There is the restriction to trade, but the controls of agricultural markets, you need to re-stabilize the price of something fundamental to humanity: food.
