Tbran in his usual inimitable home spun and very clever way has again very accurately summed up the reasons for the current high food prices. I have been following global food supply trends and population growth for perhaps 15 or more years and have told any number of people over the years that the world was heading for a food crisis. I was usually laughed out of court as there just seemed to be so much food and it was so cheap that the current generation just could not imagine actual food shortages developing. I have also said that anybody who put money into bio-fuels needed their heads read as looking at global food figures, it would be a ten year bust at the most. Food at the current prices when measured against past incomes, is still extremely cheap. The following figures are for Australia but I would think that they are roughly comparable to the USA. In 1932 in the depths of the great Depression with 28% of the work force in Oz unemployed, one tonne of wheat in value was equal to the minimum wage set at the time by our wage setting authorities in Australia. In 1947 _ 48 _49 with starvation in Europe from the aftermath of WW2, one tonne of wheat in value was equal to two week's minimum wage. In the late 1960's and early 1970's prior to the Russian's great grain robbery when wheat seemed to be so over supplied that most farmers could see no future for them, one tonne of wheat in value was equal to a tradesman's weekly wage. So we still have a long way to go in prices to match those figures but we will get there! Tbran is absolutely right about the meat consumption but he did not mention the fish. 20% of the world's protien needs come from fish. The global ocean fisheries are fished out and nearly destroyed so farmed fish are being used instead. Farmed fish are being fed grain which is another draw on world grain stocks which did not exist when the ocean's were relied on for fish. Roughly one quarter, the figures are not really known, of the world's food is grown using partial or full irrigation. One third of the irrigation water comes from underground aquifers. These aquifers will be basically exhausted as is the north China Plain aquifer already and which is where China's main wheat crop is grown, by around 2020. The world will lose about 10% of it's current food production due to the lack of water by around 2020. You ain't seen nothing yet when it comes to global food supplies and prices to food producers. The outlook is truly frightening in the longer term. I simply don't think that we can produce enough food for 9 to 9.5 billion people, an increase of about a third more mouths to feed by 2050. Despite increasing yields at the present in the laboratories and plots we are running into field and growing conditions and limitations that will slow the yield increases in the years ahead. But our biggest threats are massive and grossly inefficient Government interference in farming and food production and the take over of food production by multi national companies that will baulk at nothing to grab a chunk of the extremely lucrative food production market. This is already under way in Australia.