Bread riots in Egypt have led the army to take over the bakeries...

The FT has picked up a trend of secret bilateral deals on grain -

The moves coincide with a significant tightening of the global food market as leading exporters of agricultural commodities ban foreign sales...
Wheat traders said on Thursday that Ukraine was close to an agreement with Libya to devote up to 100,000 hectares of its own land to grow wheat for the north African country... The discussions follow a barter contract signed between Egypt and Syria in which Cairo agreed to supply Damascus with rice in exchange for secure wheat cargoes. The Philippines also sought unsuccessfully last month to reach a deal with Vietnam to secure a large supply of rice.... The move towards bilateral agriculture contracts marks a policy U-turn as such deals were gradually abandoned in the 1990s as countries started to rely on the international food market for their supplies, abandoning previous policies of self-sufficiency.

Food riots in Haiti...

Hard times for the World Food Programme...

The World Bank warns that higher food prices will reverse reductions in poverty rates...

All this raises the obvious question: have the last 20 years been an unrepeatable era of cheap food, just as they were an era of (relatively) cheap oil? (The two markets are related, of course)

UPDATE: One bright side, via Paul Krugman; wheat prices have gone so high that it's now more profitable for Helmandi farmers to grow wheat than opium. Next: urban crime wave fuelled by desperate men stealing to support their muffin habits.