1:30 p.m. | Updated A small bit of good news about food prices
from the Food and Agriculture Organization, a United Nations
agency in Rome: The price spiral seen earlier this summer as
markets reacted to droughts and other bad news has leveled off,
with the agency’s closely watched index of global food prices
essentially unchanged in August compared with July. Prices are
still up sharply from earlier in the year and remain high by
historical standards, the F.A.O. said Thursday, but they have
not reached the peaks seen in 2008 and 2011. The agency held out
hope that a third global food crisis in five years might yet be
averted. Perhaps the biggest single question about climate
change is whether people will have enough to eat in coming
decades. We have had two huge spikes in global food prices in
five years that were driven largely by chaotic weather. And this
year we may be in the early stages of a third big jump. Droughts
and heat waves have damaged crops in many producing countries
this year, including the U