Let's start with a picture.
Those who know better than we do have been telling us that inflation is under control. Yeah, unless you spend most of your money on food, like the poor in this country do, and the vast majority of people in the Third World do. In the poorer countries of the world, the spikes in food prices (and the economic crisis) have been attributed to increased instability and unrest, including in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, Libya, and many other places we hear much less about in the U.S.
The current increase, which has now surpassed that of 2008, has been attributed to use of food grains for producing fuel and bad weather conditions in a number of important growing regions, including Russia, where an historic heatwave and drought took place last summer.
So how is the outlook for this year? Well, we don't know about the northern hemisphere summer season yet, but some areas do winter wheat planting, and there are some climate signals that tell us something now about what kind of short-term climate anomalies are to come. We can then project what range of things might happen to crop yields in at least some critical regions.
More below.