World Bank - High Food Prices are the New Normal

High food prices mean one thing for many people, food insecurity.  A report from the World Bank warns that high food prices have become the "new normal" meaning that the scourge of food insecurity for the most vulnerable is now permanent.

The world cannot afford for high and volatile food prices to be the “new normal,” while millions of people continue to suffer from hunger and to die from malnutrition, the World Bank Group warned today.

The World Bank's Vice President, Otaviano Canuto, warns“A new norm of high prices seems to be consolidating.  The world cannot afford to be complacent to this trend while 870 million people still live in hunger and millions of children die every year from preventable diseases caused by malnutrition.”

Last year the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also warned that the world had entered an era of permanent food insecurity.   This is compounded by the role of speculators such as major American investment banks.   The British newspaper The Independent has accused Goldman Sachs of gambling on starvation.