World food prices remained virtually unchanged between July and August 2011 according to the FAO Food Price Index published today.

The Index averaged 231 points last month compared to 232 points in July. It was 26 percent higher than in August 2010 but seven points below its all-time high of 238 points in February 2011.

In over two decades of tracking world food prices, the U.N. Food and Agricultural organization index has never stayed so high for so long.  This represents true suffering for hundreds of millions of people who live on the edge, for whom food is a large fraction of their income like, say, North Africa (see Expert consensus grows on contribution of record high food prices to Middle East unrest).

And this year’s warming-driven extreme weather is likely to help keep food prices high for a while:

Food prices could rise next year because an unseasonably hot summer likely damaged much of this year’s corn crop….

The estimated surplus is down from last month’s forecast and well below levels that are considered healthy….

“We just didn’t have a good growing year,” said Jason Ward, an analyst with Northstar Commodity in Minneapolis. “It was too hot, too warm, too dry at the wrong time.”

… More expensive corn drives food prices higher because corn is an ingredient in everything from animal feed to cereal to soft drinks.

We are unlikely to return to sustained low food prices for a variety of reasons:

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I’m interested in your thoughts on Gore’s final presentation in “24 Hours of Reality.”  For those who missed it, here it is:

Video streaming by Ustream

I do think it is important to judge this as a communications effort aimed at three groups — activists, those who already are concerned about global warming, and the plausibly persuadable — the audience I aim for, but obviously a broader slice of the public than Climate Progress reaches.

The “24 hour long event had 8.6 million views,” writes Maggie L. Fox, President & CEO of  the Climate Reality Project, which I would count as success.  Fox has more to say that is worth reading, including, “important actions you can take today”:

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Jill Fitzsimmons & Jocelyn Fong in a Media Matters cross-post

Paul R. Epstein explains how a a levy on currency transactions could fund the clean energy transformation and healthy development.

Cutting public sector budgets, laying off state workers, emasculating health, education and support for infrastructure has become a global phenomenon. And the results are not pretty and not productive.

So concludes the United Nations in its annual report of the UN Conference on Trade and Development released on 7 September.

As President Obama calls for new means for job creation, the forces destroying jobs are aligning across this nation and across the globe.

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