Forecast: Food Prices Will Stay High, Poor Will Get Screwed

A new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development and the Food and Agriculture Organization forecasts that food prices will remain high for the next decade, and may continue to increase, further straining the world's 862 million poor and malnourished people. Not surprisingly. biofuels get a large heap of the blame. To address this continuing commodity calamity, OECD prescribes more of the same policies that helped create the problem:

“The way to address rising food prices is not through protectionism but to open up agricultural markets and to free up the productive capacity of farmers, who have proven repeatedly that they will respond to market incentives,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría at the Outlook’s launch in Paris. “Governments can also do more to foster growth and development in poor countries, so as to improve the purchasing power of the most vulnerable food buyers.”