Krugman synthesizes information I've seen documented elsewhere to conclude what has led to current food prices. I would have liked the source links permitted by online format. He raises two points I haven't seen recently. First, "Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times…Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed.This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once -- in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left ... More »

Krugman provides an excellent thumbnail sketch of the causes of the food crisis. He shortchanges the degree to which our food supply's dependence upon oil is caused by a lack of locally grown organic foods. He fails to mention the problem of a continuing booming overpopulation which exceeds the carrying capacity of our ecosystem, and the lack of political will of any politician to formulate policy to curb overpopulation. The future expected acceleration of the problem with global climate change, droughts, and latitude creep are not mentioned. But he presents a good core sketch, and manages to scorch all the presidential candidates.