Africa: Speculation fuels food price hikes

New evidence that speculation on food by hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks is fuelling the rise of bread and other basic foods has been released by anti-poverty campaigners on World Food Day, October 16, 2010. The World Development Movement has calculated that over the summer, financial speculators in Chicago alone bought up corn futures contracts equivalent to nearly 1.7 billion bushels - more than the annual consumption of Brazil, a country of some 260 million people and the world’s third largest consumer of corn.