A revolution in food systems — food supply chains upstream from farms, to the food industry in the midstream segments of processing and wholesale and in the downstream segment of retail, then on to consumers — has been under way in the United States for more than a century and in developing...

C. Peter Timmer writes about the causes of high food prices, focusing on staple grains - rice in particular - and edible oils. He shows that although food prices have come down from the spikes of early 2008, they are likely to remain higher than they were in early 2007 for years to come. The...