Feed My people

For Christian relief groups, the job of feeding the world’s poor just got harder. Understanding what sparked the food price spike is crucial to surviving and providing in the current market crisis | Mindy Belz

In Haiti, a boy shows his tongue after eating a mud cookie.

A dramatic thing happened at the corner of 4th Street and 4th Avenue South in Minneapolis in February. Inside the cavernous Arts and Crafts trading room of the oldest grain exchange in the world, hard red spring wheat hit its highest price in history. For an unprecedented five straight days at the 10-story building that has housed the grain exchange since 1907, the wheat price rose the maximum allowed each day.

In the grain pit, where "open outcry" trading accounts for the bulk of transactions—over 35 years after NASDAQ introduced electronic trading—wheat traders buy and sell futures contracts on behalf of farmers, elevator operators, and food processors like Archer Daniels Midland. Hard red spring wheat at 15 percent has the highest protein content of any wheat and is sought after for breads, muffins, bagels, pizza crust, and other flour products the world over.