Food inflation to affect entire globe in 2013

(NaturalNews) Grocery prices in the United States have risen steadily for months now, but because of the drought here at home and other global market forces, food costs are set to skyrocket around the world as well, say experts.

In addition to parched farmland throughout much of the U.S. and near the Black Sea, weak monsoons in India and ongoing hunger across wide swaths of Africa will all combine to drive food prices higher next year.

"We have had quite a few climate events this year that will lead to very poor harvests, notably in the United States with corn or in Russia with soja," Philippe Pinta of the French Farmer's Federation warned recently.

If conditions persist beyond this year, analysts note, it could be a repeat of 2007-2008, when food prices soared more than six percent to a 25-year high, according to industry analysts and reports at the time.

A year later, the UN said, prices had peaked to 30-year highs and in December 2010 the food price index rose above its 2008 peak before dropping to an 11-month low in October 2011.

Memphis, Tennessee-based Informa said a study based on 20 years' worth of food price data blamed soaring non-farm costs such as "record oil prices and soaring consumer demand from the world economy, notably the emerging middle class in Asia," were largely at fault, Reuters reported.

Today, a similar combination of things, combined with a weather element, is once more affecting world food prices.

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