For those of you who can read in French, here is an interesting post published on Radio-Canada.ca. It explains well the tradeoff between nationalist policies and the free market in the current context of an expected global food crisis.
This food crisis has emerged in the past months and is due to higher food prices. In some country, people can’t afford food anymore, a situation that explains events such as the riots in Haiti a few weeks ago. The increases in food prices stem partly from the stepped-up use of food crops for biofuels and partly from other more fundamental factors, such as rapid income growth in emerging economies (e.g. China), high fertilizer prices, low stocks, and droughts.
Share of Corn used for Ethanol Production in the U.S.
Corn prices rose by about 60 percent in 2005-06, largely because of the increased use in ethanol production. U.S. and world corn stocks have now reached near-record lows.
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