Agricultural commodities price fluctuations worrying

Where I am currently living, there have been riots as a result of price inflation. You could say that for each uptick in the price of wheat and rice and other ags, a few million more people go hungry. (Read: A few million more among the hundreds of millions already undernourished.) You can’t know what this suffering means until you actually get out of the wealthy urban centers and live among these people. Short of doing this, I invite everyone reading this post to take an hour or two out of a busy day to learn something about what these people are going through. And if you have a free month or two during the year, why not volunteer abroad in public works, public health, technology transfer, sustainable development, or humanitarian relief projects?

I won’t go into all the factors that complicate poverty alleviation, but it isn’t as simple as smug cynics often say. I am not one to say that speculation alone is responsible for the current increase in suffering. In fact, anyone who blames speculation ignores scores of much more important factors. This is the way I justify it to myself, anyway, so that I don’t feel like such a vampire.

Okay, back to trading. Take a look at the slides at the link below. Hat tip to Eddie Tofpik at ADM Investor Services International for sending me this presentation, given by John Fenton at the CFTC. Again, these are just slides — so that means all you “I just look at the pictures” types won’t have to actually read anything.

Agricultural Markets Roundtable