Yesterday was World Food Day, and NPR has a good piece about the role of speculation in food prices:
The economists argue that increased trading is a significant part of the reason grocery prices are higher this year.
And grocery prices are indeed up this year. For example, in August, the average price of bread in U.S. cities was up 17.4 percent over last year, while milk was up 12.4 percent, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Brandon Kliethermes, an agriculture economist with the forecasting firm IHS Global Insight, agrees that speculators do increase…
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