Yet another stick in the spokes of the geopolitical world wheel! And of course, climate change has nothing to do with the extreme weather affecting crops around the world -- and neither does the fact that Wall Street hedge funds have allegedly been locking up the commodities market, driving up the costs of food. That's because we live in America, where reporters never ask rude questions!

U.S. grain prices should stay unrelentingly high this year, according to a Reuters poll, the latest sign that the era of cheap food has come to an end. U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat prices -- which surged by as much has 50 percent last year and hit their highest levels since mid-2008 -- will dip by at most 5 percent by the end of 2011, according to the poll of 16 analysts. The forecasts suggest no quick relief for nations bedeviled by record high food costs that have stoked civil unrest. It means any extreme weather event in a grains-producing part of the world could send prices soaring further. [...] "Even if we have a good year, we are not going to have the inventories we've seen before. I really do think the time of cheap food prices is over, and that's just it," said analyst Chris Mann of Traders Group Inc in Chicago. "Everything is set to the point where supply equals demand right now. But if you pull one thing out of it, or if you disrupt the equation in some little way or tweak it, I think, with inventories as tight as they are, it will really have an impact on prices. A drought, a flood, anything," said Mann.

You'll notice he doesn't mention a thing about hedge funds pouring massive amounts of money into the commodities market after the housing market collapsed, and instead driving up food prices -- which in turn, promote global economic and political unrest: