Remember how the price of food worldwide went bonkers in 2007? You had to think there, as we are supposed to have forgotten that. Besides, it was India and China's fault for greedily wanting meat (how dare they!), and Brazil's for selfishly developing biofuel technology that creates renewable fuels and provides Brazil with an environmentally friendly and world-leading technology. Oh, musn't forget those dodgy Arabs and Russians for pushing the oil prices up and getting rich. Us in the West were poor victims, considering we have always been so kind giving them aid like in the 2004 tsunami and some earthquake. What? People in the developing world suffered the most? No way!
Well, forget it. The crisis was banker-made. The speculators were betting on higher food prices, therefore they did all they could to push the prices up - just to win their bets! Johann Hari in the Independent expands on this.
My one complaint about the slant of this is that Biofuels are an environmental atrocity, Nick :) The entire industry should be dismantled before it uses more water and land than the planet can spare.
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