How Global Investors Make Money Out of Hunger

Traders, intent on making money, increasingly rely on products always in demand: food commodities. Record sums are being invested in commodities. “Agricultural commodities attract investors who are no more interested in grain than they were previously in dot-com companies or subprime mortgages,” explains a team from Spiegel Online. The result is fast-rising food prices, reports the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, pushing more people into poverty with uneven effects around the globe: The US devotes less than 15 percent of its disposable income for food, while the global poor must spend 70 percent of their budget. Demand for food commodities are on the rise for many reasons, including droughts and floods associated with climate change, biofuel development, a fast-growing global population and increasing preference for meat products in the emerging economies. But the biggest culprit, argues the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, is rampant speculation and investors who only care about making profits. – YaleGlobal