News release: Feeding and Fueling Our Planet, How Food Prices Are Affecting Our Society

Feeding and Fueling Our Planet, How Food Prices Are Affecting Our Society


Feeding and Fueling Our Planet, How Food Prices Are Affecting Our Society

New book from FT Press explores how food prices are more important and volatile than ever before


New York, NY– The volatility of food prices impacts us all including the average consumer, farmers, commodity traders and our government policymakers. The increasing growth in biofuel production means that energy markets and food markets are more closely linked than ever before. The economics behind these peaks and valleys will affect what consumers pay at the grocery store and at the gas pump.

In The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices (FT Press, ISBN-13: 9780137006106, $25.99, 256 pps., hardcover, April 2010), leading agricultural economist Patrick Westhoff gives readers an inside look into what really causes large swings in food prices and what factors are likely to cause them to rise and fall in the future. The increased demand for crops not only to feed people but to power society puts an additional strain on world food supplies.

“On top of biofuels, it’s also weather, income growth, exchange rates, energy prices, government policies, market speculation—a wide variety of factors that come together to affect prices,” Westhoff says. “Food prices touch every part of society, and consumers from all walks should understand how the basic economics behind them work.”

The Economics of Food addresses critical questions about the future of food-related industries and tackles issues including:

• The basics of agricultural economics—for everyday consumers to policymakers • How the weather affects food harvests and prices around the globe • How government food policies affect your bottom line • The effect of oil prices on food prices, as we move toward increased biofuel production

Westhoff untangles these complex global relationships among food, energy and economics and helps readers come to their own conclusions about the future of food. He walks through several, very possible scenarios for the future, offering insights that will become indispensable to consumers, commodity traders and policymakers alike.

Visit http://www.ftpress.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0137006101 to download a chapter from the book and learn more.

If you are interested in receiving a copy of The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices or an interview with the author, please contact Laura Czaja at 212-641-6627 or laura.czaja@pearson.com.

About the Author
Patrick Westhoff grew up on a farm in Iowa, just a few miles from the "Field of Dreams." He spent two years in the Peace Corps in Guatemala, working with small-scale farmers, later earning a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Iowa State University. From 1992-1996, he served as an economist with the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, working on legislation including the implementations of WTO and NAFTA and the 1996 Farm Bill. He now co-directs the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri, whose analyses are relied on by the U.S. Congress and international institutions worldwide.