Hunger and profits soar

As the price of grains soar--doubling, tripling and quadrupling--international communities already food insecure are finding the pinch too much. Recent price hikes have lead to an additional 100 million people who can't afford to eat adequately (as estimated by the UN World Food Programme). Policy makers point to drought, rising demand and biofuels to explain the crisis, but GRAIN argues the "Green Revolution" and a history of liberal trade policies are really to blame. Profits for the world's largest grain traders have increased 30-90 percent from 2006 to 2007. Cargill recently announced their profits for the first quarter of 2008 were 86 percent higher than in 2006 from commodity trading. Full story