Food for thought...

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clipped from www.nytimes.com These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people. I’m talking about the food crisis. There have already been food riots around the world Paul Krugman Food-supplying countries, from Ukraine to Argentina, have been limiting exports in an attempt to protect domestic consumers First, there’s the march of the meat-eating Chinese Second, there’s the price of oil Third, there has been a run of bad weather in key growing areas. Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.