Soaring energy costs may be roiling the financial markets, but world governments are also being rattled by a more basic form of inflation: sky-high food prices.
Pakistan is stockpiling wheat and using its military to guard flour mills. Indonesian consumers have taken to the streets to protest rising soy prices. Malaysia no longer lets people take sugar, flour or cooking oil out of the country. North Dakota, the top U.S. wheat-producing state, may import from Canada due to tight supplies.
The bulls may not be running on Wall Street, but they're charging in the commodities pits. Prices for some varieties of wheat are at an all-time high of more than $16 a bushel on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. Soybean futures prices have jumped to $13.26 a bushel in Chicago trading, from less than $7.50 a bushel in 2007. Corn, which has averaged about $2.50 per bushel in recent years, is above $5 today. Rice prices have hit records. Palm oil prices, in demand for biofuels production, have risen. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization food price index jumped nearly 40% in 2007, following a 9% increase the previous year.
