Economist warns of imminent global food crisis
In a speech in Toronto this week, BMO global portfolio strategist Donald Coxe predicted a worldwide food crisis that will make $100 per barrel oil look like a walk in the park. Coxe says that a combination of factors, including growing demand from the growing middle class in China and India and the use of grain crops for biofuels, are going to increase the price of food exponentially in 2008 and the years to follow. The price of raw foods has risen 22% in the last year, and wheat is up by more than 92% in the same time period, and most of these increases have yet to be passed along to the consumer.
The coming shortage could pose hard choices for proponents of green agriculture. Coxe says that the only way food supplies can keep up with demand is through greater use of chemical fertilizers, genetically modified crops, and modern machinery, methods which are suspect in the eyes of many environmentalists.
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