After more than three decades of relatively stable nominal food prices on the world markets during the years 1974-2005 and a gradual decline in their real price by an astounding 75%, largely as an effect of the decline in the world price of grains, a combination of several factors since 2005 brought a sharp increase in food and feed prices at accelerating rates that reached crisis proportion in mid-2007.
Several factors have contributed to the rise in the price of grains and other food products. Different articles and reports have listed, however, these factors in different order and with different degrees of passion that reflected mostly the author’s views.