The following is a simple listing of the major immediate causes of the food crisis. Each will be discussed further in the text.

• Petrol price increases
• Recent growth of agri-fuel cultivation (displacing, in some cases, food crops for home consumption) – see, for instance, Box on palm oil production in Honduras
• Increasing climatic shocks (such as droughts and floods)
• Decline in national food reserves – under privatisation
• Increasing volatility in commodity markets
• Falling value of the dollar (in 2007 and 2008), in which all major commodities are traded
• Attempts to boost exports rather than meet local and national demand – under neoliberalism
• Increased migration of small-scale and subsistence farmers away from the land
• Hoarding by transnational companies to create favourable conditions for sale – manipulation of markets to create windfall profits

Source: Adapted from Megan Rowling (2008) ‘Food price rises threaten poverty for millions more’, in Central America Report, summer 2008.

This figure is referred to in the book as Figure 2.2 (Page 16)

Sources
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/FoodPricesIndex/en/ (accessed 18th July 2009).
Food Price Index: Consists of 55 commodity quotations considered by FAO commodity specialists as representing the international prices for 5 food groups (meat, dairy, creals, oils and fats, sugar).
The New York Merchantile Exchange (2009).
Crude Oil Price: Price history for a barrel of light, sweet crude oil for future delivery as traded on the New York Mechantile Exhange (NYMEX).