Poor harvest, growing population…..probably are not enough to explain the skyrocketing food prices. Besides Biofuel, ’gambling’ in the futures market of food is certainly another human-induced reason of surging food prices.

Not long ago, investment banks, hedge funds, private equity were rushing to invest in CDOs and other subprime assets. Huge losses? Not at all. Anyway, Central banks will help out when those ‘assets’ turns out to become a source of disaster.

Now, some of them have fallen in love with another kind of investment -  ”sell banks, buy farms”, a new motto for many fund managers. There are plenty of reasons for this. But one of them is simple, when you want to bet on the future (prices of food), it’s always good if you can take part in controlling it.

The ’silent tsunami’ of surging food prices has been striking all over the world. At the same time, wealthy Investors are riding on the ‘tsunami’, risking hungry poors’ lives to fish their handsome profits. (Possibly you and I will soon buy a part of the farms, as our investments like pension funds may have followed suit) Read the rest of this entry →