The global food crisis is the result of a number of geopolitical and economic factors, including:

Cause #1: Enormous Increases in Global Demand. Not only is the human population growing by millions every year, but many people are becoming much more affluent – increasing the demand for food, energy and other essential commodities.
     For example, millions of newly wealthy Indian and Chinese citizens are greatly increasing their consumption of meat, which means lots more grain consumed fattening livestock. In general, more affluent people consume more calories, increasing the demand for food.

Cause #2: Monetary Inflation. On every continent, governments are rapidly inflating their unbacked, paper currencies.
     The worst case of monetary inflation is now in Zimbabwe, where inflation is running over 100,000% a year. But many countries are inflating their currencies by 20% to 50%+ a year, destroying the value of savings and earnings, and leading to much higher prices.
     Even in the U.S., the real rate of inflation is now well over 10% and could be 20%+ within a few years, according to Shadowstat.com

Cause #3: Big Oil Price Increases. Food production, transportation, and storage is an energy-intensive business – and the price of oil and natural gas have been soaring, up some 80% in the last two years.
    Farmers, processors, truckers and retailers have no choice but to pass these huge increases along to consumers, if they want to stay in business.

Cause #4: Drought in Australia. Until recently, Australia was one of the world's major rice exporters. But six years of drought have "reduced Australia's rice crop by 98%." (Source: Keith Gbradsher, "A Drought in Australia, A Global Shortage of Rice," New York Times, 4-17-08.)

Cause #5: Speculative Commodity Bubble. When prices rise quickly for a commodity, investors jump in, pushing up prices further.
     The rapid increase in the price of grains over the past few years, have attractive large number of investors, accelerating price increases.

Cause #6: The Ethanol Scam. For the last decade, “green” politicians have been pushing the production of "environmentally-friendly" ethanol, made from crops such as corn. Thus the European Union has mandated that 10% of all fuel produced by 2011 be "bio-fuel". In the U.S., the government has vastly increased production of ethanol with producer subsidies of up to $2 a gallon, causing farmers to divert large amounts of corn from agriculture to fuel.
     Without these mandates and subsidies, ethanol would cost too much to be used as fuel.
     An unintended consequence of this diversion of corn and other crops into "bio-fuels" has been huge increases in the price of corn and other grains.

Cause #7: Export And Price Controls. In response to rising food prices, more and more countries are placing restrictions on the export of food or freezing food prices.
     For example, China, India and Vietnam have all recently banned or restricted the export of some types of rice. And Russia and Kazakhstan have restricted the export of wheat.
     Worldwide, some 48 nations now impose export restrictions and domestic price controls.
     All these measures are counterproductive. For instance, export restrictions increase food prices by reducing supply.
     And price controls (inevitably set below market prices) discourage production, again resulting in shortages and higher prices.