speculating in food

The World Development Movement have said that banks which caused the financial downturn have created volatile food prices. Bankers poured money into commodities like wheat and maize after giving up on failed mortgages.

"Bankers are to blame for price rises in coffee, chocolate and bread," stated the report

Cocoa prices jumped to a 33-year high as it emerged that a London hedge fund had snapped up a large part of the world's stock of beans. On Friday, traders say, Armajaro took delivery of 240,100 tonnes of cocoa – the biggest from London's Liffe exchange in 14 years and equal to about 7% of annual global production, according to the Financial Times. A 150% rise in cocoa prices over the past 18 months has forced many chocolate-makers to raise their prices and often to use less cocoa. Last month there was a sudden 20% jump in coffee prices as hedge funds rushed to cover their positions taken in the hope that prices would fall.

The WDM's Great Hunger Lottery report says "risky and secretive" financial bets on food prices have exacerbated the effect of poor harvests in recent years. It argues that volatility in food prices has made it harder for producers to plan what to grow, pushed up prices for British consumers and in poorer countries risks sparking civil unrest, like the food riots seen in Mexico and Haiti in 2008.The group used figures in Goldman Sachs' annual report to estimate that the bank made a profit of $1bn (£650m) through speculating on food last year.

Deborah Doane, WDM director, said: "Investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, are making huge profits by gambling on the price of everyday foods. But this is leaving people in the UK out of pocket, and risks the poorest people in the world starving.Nobody benefits from this kind of reckless gambling except a few City wheeler-dealers. British consumers suffer because it pushes up inflation, because of unpredictable oil and raw material prices, and the world's poorest people suffer because basic foods become unaffordable."

The World Development Movement, a UK-based anti-poverty campaign group, says it seeks to "establish economic justice", which means "the right of poor communities to determine their own path out of poverty, and an end to harmful policies which put profit before people and the environment".

Unfortunately, for campaigners such as WDM, capitalism cannot be so easily tamed.The answer to the problems that global capitalism engender is not a governemet policies for "ecnomic justice", even if pursued at global level.Those would still leave intact the basic structures and mechanisms of capitalism. It is something much more far-reaching that is required - a rapid and radical change of world society that will make the Earth's resources the common heritage of all humanity. That capitalism is chaotic is evident. That the poor had better abolish it before it kills them needs to be stressed with all possible urgency.