Global food-price crisis (2007-2008)
2007–2008: a documented market event that overlapped the wholesale price windows of 1 tracked ingredient — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
What happened
USDA ERS and FAO documented a sharp run-up in world grain and oilseed/vegetable-oil markets that peaked in 2008 (USDA labels it the '2006-08 commodity price spike'). Cereals, vegetable oils and protein meals accounted for the bulk of the FAO Food Price Index increase over 2007-2008. Supply and demand factors documented by ERS, FAO and EIA included rapid growth in biofuel-feedstock demand (US fuel-ethanol output expanded under the 2005 Renewable Fuel Standard and the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, with corn-ethanol production reaching roughly 8 billion gallons in 2007), adverse weather in major producing regions in 2006-07, grain/oilseed stocks-to-use falling to multi-decade lows, a depreciating US dollar, high energy prices, and export restrictions imposed by some exporting countries.
Documented account from our open, cited registry (sources below). Shown as context beside the price record — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
Affected ingredients
- Vegetable oil
Why these ingredients were exposed
Each affected ingredient's public supply structure — where it comes from and how much it leans on imports. Context that makes the co-occurrence with a documented event legible, never its cause.
- Vegetable oilDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer. Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
It explains why an ingredient sits in the path of a documented event — not that the event caused any price move. Co-occurrence in time, never a cause.
The detected moves that overlapped
Each figure is a wholesale reference against its own ±26-week normal — a market move, never a delivered price.
Vegetable oil — Jul 2008: the wholesale reference ran +59% above its ±26-week normal, held 305 days.
Co-occurrence in time, not a cause.
What moved together
Co-occurrence, not cause
Vegetable oil
In Vegetable oil's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Moving in the same weeks is not one thing causing another — many of these share a growing region, a shipping lane, or an aisle. It is a directed, bounded count: in K of an ingredient's own notable moves, another ran the same way.
Sources
3 sources
- The 2006-08 Commodity Price Spike (Amber Waves) — USDA Economic Research Service
- FAO Food Price Index — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
- US ethanol production and the Renewable Fuel Standard RIN bank — US Energy Information Administration
Documented events come from our open, cited registry (CC‑BY). Price moves are detected from public history (USDA/BLS/FRED) and shown as co-occurring context, never asserted as the cause. How events are picked.