Do oil price increases cause higher food prices?

摘要

The persistent increase in agricultural commodity prices since 2006 has raised concerns among policymakers about a global food shortage and about inflationary pressures. For example, the Financial Times on 23 May 2007, reported that 'retail food prices are heading for their biggest annual increase in as much as 30 years, raising fears that the world faces an unprecedented period of food price inflation' (see Wiggins, 2007). The director of the International Food Policy Research Institute in 2008 testified before the US Congress that rising prices for agricultural crops were causing food riots in many developing countries, and that, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 37 countries were facing food crises (see Rosegrant, 2008). In 2011, the World Bank predicted that millions more people would be driven into poverty by higher food prices in the absence of policy changes (see Inman, 2011).