cross-posted --- Sugar shortage ahead

[grasswire]

newsjock posted this in another forum.

Source: The Guardian

The price of sugar on global commodity markets has doubled since the beginning of the year and is close to a 28-year high as hedge funds and speculators jostle to bet on the possibility of an international shortage of the world's favourite natural sweetener.

For financiers seeking adrenaline-driven price lurches, sugar has become the new oil. Historically, raw sugar has traded at between 10 and 12 US cents per pound at the New York Board of Trade. But the price briefly touched 24.85 cents last month, its highest since 1981, and sugar is now hovering around the 23 cent mark.

... The London-based International Sugar Organisation predicts that global consumption of sugar will outstrip production by 9m tonnes next year, forcing food companies and governments to dig into stockpiles. In the US, snack manufacturers including Mars, Nestlé and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts urged the Obama administration to relax import controls, warning the US could "virtually run out of sugar".

Experts say the spectre of a rapidly moving price has attracted the attention of hedge funds seeking to make a short-term speculative buck.

... A political outcry over speculation pushing up oil prices last year has encouraged some funds to shift their attention to agriculture futures – in typically lower- profile, less-noticed trading pits. "It doesn't draw the attention of regulatory authorities like maybe energy does," said Steve Platt, a futures strategist at Archer Financial Services in Chicago. "There has been some movement of index funds into a heavier concentration on sugar."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/06/sugar-pr...

[Warpy]

1. Speculators driving up the cost of sugar

is what gave us HCFS in everything during the last go-around.

With the push to get that stuff out of our food, the speculators have jumped on sugar again.

It's just another example of too few people with too much money creating speculative bubbles.

Now that it's been noticed, the big money will pull out while the little fish jump in and keep it going.

This is how they bleed money off what's left of the middle class.

[ginnyinWI]

2. right now it's about 50 cents a pound

That's $1.99 for a four pound bag--store brand. Maybe it's time to stock up. Not that we use a lot of it, but thinking of Christmas baking.