Food is becoming more expensive around the world. In fact, world food prices rose to near a record high this April as grain costs continued to increase. The cost of living in the U.S. has been rising at its fastest pace since December 2009, and Chinese consumer prices have been going up at their fastest rate since 2008.

One reason for the rise in food prices is Wall Street greed. In 1991, bankers at Goldman Sachs came up with a new kind of investment product, a derivative that tracked 24 raw materials, including food products, as part of a single mathematical formula they called the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI).

The problem came in 1999, when the Commodities Futures Trading Commission deregulated futures markets, and bankers could take as large a position in grains as they liked -- something which had been forbidden to all but those actually involved in food production since the Great Depression.

According to Foreign Policy: