This is a very good news segment from Fox News on the soaring costs of food worldwide. Although brief, the reporters do a very good job of explaining it, and even connect it to the rising cost of energy. We didn't really start feeling the last pinch in the cost of food, in 2008, until the price of a barrel of oil passed $140. Compare that to the present day, in which a barrel of oil is a little over $90, and you are already starting to see the beginning of more riots and social disturbances. As I think I said, that's because we were riding the peak of global prosperity (for lack of a better term) back in '08, and now we are just emerging from a financial collapse; of course, the resultant rises in the cost of energy and food as the economy recovers will crash the economy anew and set us back even further. I think that this is one of the central themes of peak oil/energy decline: that we will struggle, at least for a time, to get our economy back to where it was, and the unavoidable rising costs of energy (due to peak production) will crash the economy, preventing a sustainable, lasting recovery. I also believe that devaluation of the U.S. Dollar is playing a key role in food price inflation, but advanced economics is out of my depth.
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