MOLI VIEW™

Understanding the price rises in food, or agroflation as it's now being called, means getting down and dirty with some data. Now, I've been mouthing off about this, briefly, in an excellent piece by Alex Renton in today's Observer. I've also had a go at trying to explain it on the BBC World Service show Your World Your Say, which you can listen to by clicking the link. But of these venues, welcome though they were, neither really gave me a chance to tell the whole truth. So here's a fuller explanation of what's going on behind the scenes at the supermarket.

The above-the-fold version of the story is this: The recent rise in food prices has been widely explained with reference to the increasing global population, increased meat consumption, the hike in the price of fossil fuels, and climate change. For the story behind the story, read on.

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