Food prices and speculation

According to the New York Times and FT, hedge funds and other investors are spending billions and buying up farms and vast amounts of agricultural farm-land in Sub-saharan Africa, Australia, North and South America, Eastern Europe ... even in Northern England.

They are also buying the fertilizer, grain elevators, shipping equipment and other necessities for producing food.

The need for food is becoming ever greater so this is a safe and profitable investment. We are entering "an era of huge food prices". Land is also "very very cheap" right now.

Both articles report the usual blurb that these investments will "consolidate small farms" and thereby "bring value to the people" (junk economics) - since when are investors interested in bringing down food prices? Of course, the poorest will suffer most.

What this ultimately means is that by controling the entire system (or even having a direct link), speculators can manipulate the prices and if the prices are too low, in their opinion, then they will stockpile food and force prices up. Equally, if the prices are too low in one country then they will ship the commodoties to elsewhere, where they get larger profits - until, presumably, the prices in the former country increase too.

For this reason, I think we should start to become less dependent on these systems, or in other words, have a more self-sufficient (and inexpensive) access to healthy food and clean energy. That is the aim of this blog.