This week’s Economist suggests that it is time to stop worrying about the price of oil and the credit crunch and start worrying about the price of food. Money shot:

Bob Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, reckons that food inflation could push at least 100m people into poverty, wiping out all the gains the poorest billion have made during almost a decade of economic growth.

Of course this won’t affect people in the West much, because food makes up a relatively small amount of their daily budget. When Zoellick is talking about the “poorest billion” he’s talking about people who live on $1 a day or less, and for whom food is a major expense. For them, life is getting very ugly.

Part of the cause, however, is that we in the West are encouraging our farmers to grow biofuels instead of food.