Commondreams.org carried an article from Al Jazeera regarding the global collective amnesia of the 2008 world food crisis when prices suddenly declined without any of the causes being addressed.
“However, while prices for grains and foods have declined in 2009, they are still higher than pre-crisis levels and the fundamental causes of their volatility have not disappeared.
The international economic system has witnessed a dramatic disbanding of trade and investment barriers.
However, the international market for agricultural commodities, the nature of industrial agriculture, changing consumption patterns and international finance all threaten to make food price volatility and food insecurity a recurrent feature of the early 21st century.
Agriculture offers a textbook case of international market distortion. And in this case, the market distortion is created by precisely the developed countries that extol the virtues of free markets.”
Read the full article here.
