food bubble

Prof. Jarosz mentioned in lecture on Monday the article The food bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it by Frederick Kaufman. It's a good read and I just thought I'd link to it here (.pdf file). Take a moment to read it (it's only about 7 pages) and let us know what you think in the 
comments!

The global speculative frenzy sparked riots in more than thirty countries and drove the number of the world’s “food insecure” to more than a billion. In 2008, for the !rst time since such statistics have been kept, the proportion of the world’s population without enough to eat ratcheted upward.

“This isn’t just any commodity,” continued Voge. “It is food, and people need to eat."

Agriculture, rooted as it is in the rhythms of reaping and sowing, had not traditionally engaged the attention of Wall Street bankers, whose riches did not come from the sale of real things like wheat or bread but from the manipulation of ethereal concepts like risk and collateralized debt.