1) Commodities usually rise on inflation, as such, they are a hedge against her while the other traditional assets lose their value. As a consequence, they attract a huge influx of speculative money, further work that drives prices.

2) New effects of oil peak, and will soon peak natural gas, increasing the cost decreases Crude oil and natural gas, which incidentally is a key raw material for commercial fertilizer production costs is a driving activity.

3) worldwide effort to displacement of declining oil fuels with biofuel has had the unintended consequence of reducing the cultivation of food grains. Here is a quotation from Paul Krugman in a recent article on the subject: "You can put this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states." So, since food demand is very inelastic, reduced supplies transferred directly to higher prices.

4) China's emerging middle class is trying to follow that of the U.S., not only in terms of car ownership and acquisition of wealth, but in the diet, which is becoming an increasingly consumer meat. It takes 2x weight chicken raise its grain, beef and 7x weight. The transition from the diet, which depends on grain to one based on meat protein creates enormous pressure on the supply of grain in the world, and


5), perhaps most important, the world has entered the era of unprecedented deficit of fuel, food, water, metals, building materials, which means that there are shortages of almost everything that gets consumed. Read Richard Heinberg new book: that "Everything rush.

Today's deficits are unprecedented in the sense that in the past, food shortages, in particular, were usually local, due to adverse weather conditions, war, and the like.

Now, food availability is a global problem, and weather conditions, for example, the recent drought in Australia, played a role in this, but more fundamental reason is that there were too many mouths to feed.

The greater part of the problem of shortage of land to meet the growing population and their incursions into cities traces.

The representative of the Philippine National Council of Farmers Rice recently said Al-Jazeera, the Philippines population is growing, now its 87 to 90 million people, but the use of land for rice is declining. The Government is not prepared for this dilemma. "

According to the United Nations, the annual growth rate of arable land worldwide fell to 0.1% in the past decade, compared with a rate of 0.3%, which was held since the early 1960's.

For the vast population of the world's poor, food costs constitute more than half the household budget, and nearly half the world depends on rice for most of their caloric intake per day.

$ 0.50 hike in the cost of 10 LB bag of rice this inconvenience, but for them it becomes a question of whether or not they will eat, period.