You can’t eat gold, folks. And you can’t eat silver. Everybody has to eat to stay alive, and that means everybody needs a constant stream of food just to keep breathing. That’s why investing in food makes so much sense. And by “investing in food,” I mean any or all of the following: • Investing in storable food that you can save on the shelf and keep for future use or barter. • Investing in your own gardening skills so that you have the know-how to produce food when needed. • Investing in non-hybrid garden seeds so that you have the genetic blueprints to grow food that can propagate itself generation after generation. • Investing in farmland — especially farmland with water — that offers the fertility and climate to produce food. • Investing in educational courses that teach you how to create food through a variety of methods: Wildcrafting, gardening, sprouting and so on.

The majority of people in most countries surveyed by international aid agency Oxfam said they’re no longer eating the same kind of food as they did two years ago, with 39 percent globally blaming rising food costs and another 33 percent citing health reasons. “Our diets are changing fast and for too many people it is a change for the worst,” said Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam. “Huge numbers of people, especially in the world’s poorest countries, are cutting back on the quantity or quality of the food they eat because of rising food prices.”

Ruuan hinta kääntyi viime syksynä vajaan vuoden laskun jälkeen nousuun. Helmikuussa ruoka kallistui poikkeuksellisen paljon, runsaat kuusi prosenttia viime vuodesta. PTT:n mukaan hintojen nousu kuitenkin hidastuu ja asettuu tänä vuonna keskimäärin noin 4,5 prosentin paikkeille.

Commodity prices have spiked in recent weeks on harsh weather that has hit various parts of the world. Sugar prices last week surged to a three-decade high because of supply constraints stemming from cyclones and floods that have recently hit Australia, the world’s third-largest sugar producer behind Brazil and Thailand.

As the new year begins, the price of wheat is setting an all-time high in the United Kingdom. Food riots are spreading across Algeria. Russia is importing grain to sustain its cattle herds until spring grazing begins. India is wrestling with an 18-percent annual food inflation rate, sparking protests. China is looking abroad for potentially massive quantities of wheat and corn. The Mexican government is buying corn futures to avoid unmanageable tortilla price rises. And on January 5, the U.N. Food and Agricultural organization announced that its food price index for December hit an all-time high.

China’s ability to feed a fifth of the world’s population will become tougher because of land degradation, urbanisation and over-reliance on fossil-fuels and fertiliser, a United Nations envoy warned today as grain and meat prices climbed on global markets.