There is no food crisis. There is a massively inefficient market and a retarded media though. What I'm trying to say is, that, with the tariffs and trade barriers the western countries hold up we're being held hostage in a situation where the infrastructure is unable to develop in where it should in order to support the increasing demand for food. The problem there is, that dramatic industry development often requires a level of export. Even if someone'd invest in building basic infrastructure for food production in a country B outside the European Union/United States, the chances are, he'd go out of business even if he could produce goods of equal quality cheaper and more effective. This has to do with a 19th (or early 20th) century thought of the necessity of protecting homeland food production to ridiculous extents.
The only thing that's vaguely interesting about this "food crisis" is the fact that it leads to yet more polarization. It's like a little extra tax to the less wealthy.
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Originally Posted by Meatboy
Luxury foods will be largely unaffected by increases in the cost of production, since they are by their nature not tied to basic commodities.
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This can hold true. Let's go through it a bit. Most of the people who consume "luxury" foods are wealthy. Income spent on food already represents a relatively minor part of their total net income. All this won't affect the relative purchasing power of the rich people as much as it does for poor people. The people who have money are largely unaffected, and even if the so called middle class will whine and cry, the truth is this doesn't affect them
that much.
At best, this sort of stuff could, though, result in an interesting Giffen -effect. This would be due to the fact that the people who are already consuming the less expensive food products (and little if any of those mentioned "luxury foods") and investing a larger share of their net income in grocieries experience a more significant decrease in their real income. Even if the prices of food will be increasing, these people will be increasing their demand on the least expensive, most basic foods.
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Originally Posted by Aedolaws
The price of everything will rise
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This is largely trivial. The price of everything has, most of the modern market history, risen. There's only so many examples of actual stagflation/deflation in the history. What comes to real price increases, I wouldn't necessarily sign this.
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Originally Posted by Alessio
The fuel market is known for it's continuously increasing demands and skyrocketing prices.
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The fuel market is known for it's retarded inefficiency, oligopolistic hegemony, and a couple of people wearing rags on their heads making a lot of money out of it. If they actually wanted the fuel prices to remain stable, they would have them remain stable and simply reduce the limits on the output. It's a giant conspiracy out there. The real need of alternative fuel sources grows not only from the fact that the currently widespread ones are nominally limited and will probably eventually run out, but the fact that there's a bunch of cakefaces sitting on them.
The increasing food prices will hit the people with less income harder. This is what's actually interesting.