Reasons for Rising Food Prices? Supply, Demand, Climate

Political unrest in the Arab world and elsewhere is supposedly being caused by the actions of none other than … Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke! That is ridiculous, but still, I’ve been getting correspondence from readers insisting that Mr. Bernanke is responsible. You see, quantitative easing leads to rising food prices, which leads to riots, which … O.K., there are a lot of broken links in that silly chain. Let’s take a look at food and commodity prices to discover what’s really going on.