Speculators Pushing Up Food Prices?
Written by Asinus Asinum Fricat on June 1, 2008 – 8:04 am -My email box this morning bristled with an inordinate amount of messages from various food agencies but the one that I opened up straight away came from the FAO, with a link to their latest pdf prepared & published for next week’s high level conference on world food security in Rome. Speculators outside of the food industry pouring money into financial mechanisms in the commodity markets could be cause for concern.
In a far-reaching report on global food prices, the UN questions the contribution of institutional investors to the recent turmoil in commodity markets.
“A key concern now is the participation of new agents that are perceived to be motivated by risk-diversification to the exclusion of serious assessment of price levels.”
A month ago I wrote a diary which, gasp, dared to suggest that indeed there was a tidal wave of investors and speculators pouring into the futures markets for corn, wheat, rice and other commodities and who were driving up prices. Read more »
Tags: Commodity Traders, Community, FAO, Soaring Food Costs, UN
Posted in Current Events, Food, The Politics of Food | 3 Comments »