World food prices - A looming challenge

The food riots of 2008 were a reminder of our infallibility and of how precarious life can be for the great swathes of humanity living at the very edge of subsistence.

All of a sudden the basic staples of life, which we take for granted, were not guaranteed.

Millions of people, and not just in the developing world, went hungry because the price of basic foods escalated. Civil unrest and riots followed, millions more bore it in silence.