How Speculation Contributed to Two World Food Crises

By Sophie Van Hullen|May 30, 2018|Uncategorized|0 comments

The hypothesis that financial speculation was behind soaring food prices in 2007-08 and 2010-11, or at least substantially contributed to it, first surfaced in 2008 when ‘The Accidental Hunt Brothers’ Report by Masters and White (2008) drew a link between institutional investors’ positions in commodity futures markets and the significant and synchronised spike of commodity prices. Prices across commodities almost quadrupled between 2004 and 2008, including prices of key staples

SOAS Summer School Food and Nutrition in Development

The Summer School Food and Nutrition in Development 2017 has taken place over three weeks in August at SOAS. It has been jointly co convened by Deborah Johnston, Fiorella Picchioni and Lorena Lombardozzi, and involved various academics from the department of Economics and the Food Studies Centre. It has offered a unique programme built on the SOAS Economics Department research and teaching expertise in the political economy of food and nutrition. The