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.