"It's no secret that world food prices have been spiking — most recently, according to USA Today, because of "bad harvests due to drought in Russia, China and Argentina and floods in Australia, among other things." Those other things include the growing global population...
The future pressure on food supplies could be enormous, especially for the poorest of the poor. Yet as Brown points out, the world "is losing its ability to soften the effect of shortages." In the past, the U.S. "was effectively able to steer the world away from potential catastrophe" by tapping "grain surpluses or idle cropland that could be planted to rescue countries in trouble."
Now, however, that buffer has all but vanished as we convert ever more grain into ethanol."
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