As commodity prices soar, South America’s agricultural giant steps up to feed a needy world
The Brazilians still call these lightly wooded plains the cerrado—or “closed” or “inaccessible” land. But nowadays the cerrado is very much open for business, its fertility a springboard from which the world’s newest superpower in agriculture is emerging. “We have been [...]

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The United Nations report, the global agriculture outlook through 2017, said prices for farm crops will remain substantially higher over the next decade because of fundamental changes in demand, though they will gradually decline from current highs.
Because the recent spike in crop and food prices has been caused in part by temporary factors like drought, [...]

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Corn-based fuel isn’t the villain critics contend, but shifting to other crops is critical
Blame energy costs, not ethanol, for your grocery bill
Has ethanol contributed to the surge in food prices? Not very much, concludes a group of agricultural economists at Texas A&M University in an Apr. 10 report from the school’s Agricultural & Food Policy [...]

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These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people.
I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase [...]

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