Food security is not an issue in the U.S. Presidential debates.  Not yet anyway.  But if the candidates were scrambling for votes in places like China, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, or Afghanistan, it might be a different story.  In the past year, food prices have soared worldwide.  Prices for corn, wheat and soybeans have more than doubled. In many parts of the world, prices of basic food staples have gone up by 40 percent in the past few months alone.

For most Americans, the impact of rising food prices has not between catastrophic. Grain commodity prices account for only a fraction of the American food bill. Over the past twelve months, U.S. food prices rose less than 5 percent.

But elsewhere in the world many people are highly dependent on wheat and other grains, particularly those living on $2 a day or less.  For many of them the impact is devastating.

The New York Times today has a front page story (“Rising Inflation Creates Unease in Middle East”) that suggests that rising food prices are politically destabilizing.  Here’s what it had to say:

Here in Jordan, the cost of maintaining fuel subsidies amid the surge in prices forced the government to remove almost all the subsidies this month, sending the price of some fuels up 76 percent overnight. In a devastating domino effect, the cost of basic foods like eggs, potatoes and cucumbers doubled or more.

In Saudia Arabia, where inflation had been virtually zero for a decade, it recently reached an official level of 6.5 percent, though unofficial estimates put it much higher. Public protests and boycotts have followed, and 19 prominent clerics posted an unusual statement on the Internet in December warning of a crisis that would cause “theft, cheating, armed robbery and resentment between rich and poor.”

In Syria, where oil production is drying up, prices have also risen sharply. Although it has begun to liberalize its rigid socialist economy, the government has repeatedly put off plans to eliminate the subsidies that keep prices artificially low for its citizens, fearing domestic reprisals.

This weekend, Josette Sheeran, the director of the UN's World Food Programme, told the BBC that it is considering plans to ration food aid because of rising prices and a shortage of funds.

"We're also seeing some new growing needs in some places like Afghanistan, where people are being thrown into food insecurity just simply due to the higher food prices."

She said those who had been hardest hit so far were people in developing countries who were living on 50 US cents (£0.25) a day, 80-90% of which was already being spent on food.

"In some of these developing countries, prices have gone up 80% for staple food," she added. "When you see those kinds of increases, they are simply priced out of the food markets."

Even middle-class, urban people in countries such as Indonesia, Yemen and Mexico were increasingly being priced out of the food market or forced to sacrifice education and healthcare, she warned.

Ms Sheeran said Egypt had just widened its food rationing system after two decades and Pakistan had reintroduced ration cards after many years.

As these articles suggest, several factors are driving up food prices.  Some of it is due to changing consumption patterns—increasing affluence in China, for example, is leading people to demand more grain intensive food like chicken and pork.  Some of it is due to rising energy prices, which is increasing the cost of producing and transporting food. 

Much of it, however, still comes back to the fact that rising population is boosting the world’s appetite for food, while drought and rising energy prices are making it ever more difficult for farmers to meet that demand. 

Maybe the next presidential debate should be in Morocco or Timbuktu.