As ever, it is the poor and vulnerable who are most at risk here. Despite considerable efforts and some success in eradicating poverty in the developing countries of the world, there are still millions suffering. Increased costs of food will reverse some of the progress that has been made.
Although people in the developed world are not likely to face starvation in the foreseeable future, at least in those countries with proper social welfare systems, they are nevertheless likely to suffer from the same problems of increased cost. As people have been able to spend comparatively less on food (apart from expenditure on luxury products), they have had comparatively more money to spend on investment and expenditure. Although some have saved the money and some have spent it on other consumer goods, there are others who have used the money for education or to start businesses. These investments generally act as improvements to the economy and to the labour market, which would suffer if they were to be removed. The opportunity to invest in the future also offers one of the best means available of enhancing social mobility - that is, the opportunity for people born poor to become wealthy through their own efforts. This has been throughout history an important means of ensuring that the more talented and diligent people rise to the top. Societies in which this does not happen suffer in the long run as mediocrity prevails - as in the case of dynastic politics.
Large retail chains are already exerting considerable pressure on their smaller suppliers to provide ever cheaper and more standardised goods - that process is likely not just to continue but to intensify. Small farmers will suffer. No doubt food technicians will be kept busy trying to reduce costs by various processing and substitution technologies, which is not likely to have beneficial nutritional outcomes.
On a larger scale, governments which had been contending for control over territory with resources of oil or water will in the future be contending for control of food-producing territory. Contestation of the rights to control the oceans will further increase and the race to demonstrate ownership of polar waters will represent a real possibility for conflict. Consider the broad steppes of Ukraine and Kazakhstan - how much more important will grain growing land become in the future? The governments of Australia, Canada and Russia, meanwhile, will be looking at ways to convert land on which it is not currently convenient to produce food to become more convenient, set against the context of global climate change.
The economies of much of the western world, particularly the USA, rest upon seas of debt as citizens have been encouraged to spend more on consumer goods and pay for them later. The vulnerability of such people to a worsening in the global economy is already being demonstrated as people have their houses repossessed.
