The food price crisis, which intermittently lasted from 2006 to about 2012–13, raised a number of issues about the roles of markets and states in ensuring food security at home and globally. This issue has arisen once again in 2020, as a result of COVID-19, undoing years of progress, but it is being resolved differently than the earlier crisis. There are fewer trade restrictions. Among the issues that the food price crisis raised was the domino effect of the US biofuel policies on maize, wheat, and rice prices in 2007–8, leading to a “perfect storm,” and policy responses of large exporters, leading to key debates about global interdependence, national vs. global objectives, and policy measures adopted by some countries—some of these debates have remained unresolved. Implications for the COVID-19 pandemic and the post-COVID-19 world are drawn in the chapter, regarding trade vs. stabilization, information systems, safety nets, and investment strategies.
2007–2012 Food Price Spikes and Crisis—A Decade and a Half Later