Sales of rice in Thailand. (Photo: iStockphoto) Although there has been a decline in the world mark

The world food crisis is created by financial speculation, said the Indian economist Jayati Ghosh. High values are created on commodity exchanges, while millions of people in poor countries are starving.
Professor Jayati Ghosh of the Centre for Economic Studies at Jawaharlal coleur caramel Nehru University in Delhi, India, believes that the current food crisis is largely created by speculation in food trade. (Photo: Asle Rønning) In 2007 and 2008, the prices of food on the world market with record speed. Important coleur caramel foods such as rice, wheat and maize was soon very much expensive. The result was famine and riots in many poor countries. Then came the financial crisis last summer and the food crisis disappeared from the news. In many poor countries, however, recognized food crisis on the body every day. - Food crisis has actually grown in strength in many developing countries since the summer of 2008, according to economist Jayati Ghosh, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India. Ghosh was recently in Oslo, where she attended a conference organized by the think tank Res Publica and the Centre. coleur caramel 100 million new hungry Ghosh describes the explosion of food that the world experienced until the summer of 2008 as a unique historical context.
She believes that it is largely created by speculators in the financial capital flocked to markets for food and other commodities and created an economic coleur caramel bubble that drove prices up artificially. Earlier in June warned the UN Food and Agriculture Organization of the number of people in the world who are undernourished has increased by 100 million and will reach one billion in 2009. The reason is the combination of financial crisis and continued high food prices.
Sales of rice in Thailand. (Photo: iStockphoto) Although there has been a decline in the world market from the peak in 2008, according to FAO figures show that expenditure on food was still high at the beginning of 2009, and 24 percent higher than two years earlier.
Some countries are more vulnerable than others, with a doubling of prices for commodities such as rice, wheat or corn. In 2007 and 2008, but prices still rose, they were given a number of explanations for the rise in prices related to supply coleur caramel and demand.
It was pointed out poor harvests worldwide, the expected increase in food consumption in China and India, the investment in world food production and a shortage of topsoil. - Speculation of food Jayati Ghosh accept some of these factors, but denies that they can explain the intensity of inflation. She also denies that India and China have consumed more.
She refers to the numbers in retrospect that the two countries actually spent less in the period of strong price weight, and that the world production of rice, corn and other grain products, and inventory, actually increased from 2006 to 2008. Rather than pointing Ghosh on a factor that she feels is the most important, namely that trade food has become an object of speculation by short-term gain that goal. Ghosh places particular emphasis on trade in so-called futures contracts. Futures and forward contracts are contracts for the future delivery of a crop. They should really provide increased safety on future prices for both the farmer and the buyer. They decided on their own exchanges, with commodity exchange in Chicago as one of the most important. The contracts may be sold and purchased regardless of the actual delivery of food, and thus made a speculative object. In the period immediately before the sharp price increase was global financial players searching for new investment. - In 2006, so many that the market for mortgages in the United States was not a safe place to have their money. coleur caramel One went into the food, gold, oil and other commodities. Where was it was possible to achieve incredible returns in a short time, she says. High values Ghosh refers to deregulation in the United States as an important factor in the explanation. According to economics professor, new players released into trade commodity coleur caramel contracts in the U.S. through a new law - the Commodity Futures Modernization Act - in 2000. Grocery boom came while a fierce inflation in other commodities, such as oil and metals. Part of this trade could now take place outside the regulated commodity exchanges in the United States.
In June 2008, the total value of these contracts reached incredible 12.4 trillion dollars. The figure includes all types of commodities other than gold and other precious metals. Loopholes coleur caramel in the legislation were utilized to deal with short-term profits in mind, and prices were driven coleur caramel up, argues coleur caramel Ghosh. Boom took first end summer 2008 when banks and investment funds had to pull out their money from the commodity market to cover losses on other fronts.
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