The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices

Are Food Prices About to Careen Out of Control Again?

Do biofuels cause world hunger--or is that all just hype?

What are government food and energy policies really doing?

What do you need to know before investing in the food and energy sectors?

Food prices are more volatile and uncertain than ever, and massive growth in biofuels has introduced a huge new wildcard. Do more biofuels mean more hunger? Will a recovering economy raise food prices--and how much? The answers to questions like these will powerfully impact everyone on Earth.

Now, leading researcher Patrick Westhoff has written the first objective, easy-to-understand primer on one of the coming decade’s most crucial issues: the profoundly interconnected economics of food and energy.

Westhoff cuts through the competing, noisy arguments coming from the biofuels industry, food activists, and everyone else with an axe to grind or fortunes at stake. If you eat, drive, or invest...if you make public policy or try to influence it...you need to read this book.

In recent years, food prices have soared--and plummeted. As crops are increasingly shifted to biofuel production, will prices soar again? What are the hidden relationships between the food on your plate and the gas in your car? Will economic recovery lead directly to massive inflation in both food and energy? What do food prices have to do with world hunger?

Now, one of the world’s leading experts untangles the complex global relationships between food, energy, and economics and helps readers draw their own intelligent conclusions about the future of food. Patrick Westhoff reveals what really causes large swings in food prices--and what may make them careen wildly in the future.

Westhoff discusses the factors that drive food pricing: not just biofuels but also weather, income growth, exchange rates, energy prices, government policies, market speculation, and more. Next, he walks through several scenarios for the future, offering indispensable insights for consumers, commodity traders, and policymakers alike.

Policies matter--more than you realize
Government’s surprising impact on food prices--domestic and foreign

Money in your pocket, food on your plate
How changes in income and the broader economy affect food prices

Speculating on speculation
What market speculators can--and can’t--do to food prices

Stuff happens
Predicting the impact of the surprises you can’t predict