“We apologise for recent price increases,” reads the sign over the bread counter, “but they are due to global factors beyond our control.” This is not a Third World food stall but an upscale supermarket in Brussels, capital of the European Union, whose farming system was once notorious for the mountains of surplus grain it produced.
Those mountains are now gone. The world is down to its lowest grain stocks for decades, and food prices are up around the world.
There were street riots over the price of basic foods in Mexico and India last year, and in Jakarta, Indonesia,…
