Global food prices reach all-time high (Marketplace)

Marketplace published an article on how its index of global food prices increased 12.6 percent in March from the month before, the highest it’s been since the U.N. started tracking prices more than three decades ago. According to senior research fellow Joseph Glauber, Countries might be tempted to keep all that food for domestic use, but that has consequences. “You take that out of the world market, that means that the world market has to find other suppliers. It drives the price up in world markets even higher,” he said. “Importing countries should be flexible and willing to seek out alternative suppliers. One of the reasons there’s been so much concern is that Ukraine accounts for such a large share of what’s traded in the world. Both Ukraine and Russia account for about 12 percent of calories that are traded in the world.” Farmers should respond to the high prices by planting more crops, Glauber added. But that’s a solution that will take months — so food prices will likely stay high until at least 2023.