New videos about food speculation

 Jessica Radford, campaigns and policy intern

The influx of financial participation in the commodity markets has played a key role in causing price rises and volatility. Prices are increasingly affected by the financial markets, rather than the needs of the consumers and farmers.

As you know we are campaigning to stop banks from betting on food and consequently forcing people into poverty and hunger. The food campaign is calling for regulation, which includes restrictions to be put on speculators preventing excessive betting on food prices and futures contracts to be traded on an open exchange with the banks required to provide more information on their activities.

The Ecologist recently went to Mexico, where they spoke to people about the price of maize tripling in a short time. This is the video they produced.

Struggling to get your head around how food speculation actually works? As a useful addition to our Broken markets report - explaining how speculation affects food prices - that came out last week, our European partners, WEED, Védegylet, Glopolis, Aitec, Somo and NEF, have produced a video to explain the problems of food speculation and the negative effects this can have on food prices. 

To pressure the government to support regulation of food speculation, take action here.