ABSTRACT
We are living in a time of crucial transitions in the global political economy of food. The years 2010 and 2011 have witnessed another round of food price spikes: wheat prices roughly doubled from June 2010 to January 2011. Food prices have been described as one trigger for the recent social unrest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region (Lagi et al. 2011). While food prices are projected to remain volatile, food security and the availability of cheap food have once again been firmly put on national policy agendas as well as on those of bilateral and multilateral agencies. International prices of the main food staples have been falling for at least 200 years as a consequence of technological advances in agronomy and the non-internalization of environmental impacts. However, continuing population growth in East and South Asia, the MENA region, and Sub-Saharan Africa in the coming decades and the tendency to adopt protein-rich diets will exert increasing pressure on the global food supply.
