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Global Food Inflation Is Soaring Through The Roof

June 7th, 2021 Comments off

According to the United Nations, its UN Food Price Index indicates, on a year to year basis, a rise of nearly 40 percent. This rate of increase in the price of the single most important basket of commodities critical for sustaining human life clearly contradicts official government statistics throughout the world, seeking to reassure their publics that the unprecedented level of public indebtedness accumulated by sovereigns over the past year has at worst only led to a slight uptick in the inflation rate, and only temporarily.

 

Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com

 

Consumers shopping for food know the truth. A friend residing in the U.S. recently shared with me the dismaying news that the price of watermelon has risen to $12.00, a price point which only a year ago would have seemed imaginary. This dangerous price spiral is an inevitable outcome of the unprecedented government borrowing in the name of fighting a pandemic, coupled with Covid-induced disruptions to the global supply chain.

The noted economic historian Adam Tooze notes that the last time such staggering levels of food price inflation occurred was in 2011. As he observes, this enabled the Arab spring, and all its subsequent geopolitical destabilization.