Cost of living crisis: stop city speculators hiking up food prices

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Hi John,

The news is dominated by the ever-deepening global cost of living crisis, which is already having very real impacts on people’s lives. Both here in the UK and around the world many people are having to cut back on food or simply can’t afford to eat at all. But Liz Truss’s government not only seems to have very little to offer in terms of real solutions, they are actually doing exactly the opposite of what’s needed. We need to stop them and that’s why I’m writing to you today.

This summer the government introduced the ‘Financial Services and Markets Bill.’ It sounds technical and dull right? But essentially the bill includes this government’s plan to deregulate the financial industry, giving more power to the City of London and freeing up hedge funds and investment banks to behave more dangerously. And part of this agenda is taking the brakes off food speculation.

The timing for the bill could not be more obscene. If the bill gets through parliament this autumn, it could create even more chaos for food prices – causing more harm to the world’s poorest communities who are already struggling to cover their most basic needs. It’s an invitation for financial speculators who have little to do with the growing or selling of food to gamble on hunger. Some of them, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citi have already seen their revenue increase as a result of commodity trading, some by as much as £1.9 billion.

We have a short window to sound the alarm and pressure the government to stop this. We’ve already written blogs to be shared on social media and contacted MPs, but there is so much more to do. If you can, please urgently donate £5 to help grow our campaign against the government stripping away financial regulations. We can’t allow even more excessive food speculation causing people to starve.

Yes, I’ll make a donation

Speculators profit, people suffer. We've been here before and the solutions are obvious

Lots of us will remember the food price crisis of 2008-11. At the time, we successfully exposed how big banks and hedge funds took advantage of unregulated financial markets, excessively betting on food prices and artificially driving up costs. As a result of tireless campaigning, some regulations were introduced to rein this in. And while these new laws were not enough, they were a step in the right direction.

Now out of the EU, our government is aiming to remove even these rules - at a time when 2.3 billion (or nearly 30%) of people are already living with chronic hunger globally and when even in a rich country like the UK we are facing a full-blown food price emergency.

Although the current context is complex, with the invasion of Ukraine and climate-related crop losses disrupting supplies, the fact is that there is no overall food shortage. But excessive speculation is driving up costs for staple foods globally, causing unnecessary hardship and suffering.

We have no choice but to speak out again. We fought against this system that enables the most powerful to make vast profits at the cost of the most vulnerable then. And we will continue our fight now, but we can’t do it without you.

Please donate £5 today so we can ensure excessive food speculation and its links to inequality and hunger are featured in the mainstream media. Your donation could help us to work in coalition with other organisations to build parliamentary resistance against stripping away regulation and limit speculators’ future power over food prices.

Yes, want to help

It’s a crisis of price, not one of production, and we can do something about it

Crop yields have consistently increased in the last decades and current global wheat stocks are high relative to historical trends. While the Ukraine war might have been an additional spanner in the works, it’s not what’s caused food prices to go through the roof. It’s the existing unresolved weaknesses in how our global food system operates that make it vulnerable to speculation and allow a situation like this to become far worse than it has to be.

Of course, we know the climate crisis is also putting increasing pressure on our food system. Rather than stabilise this genuine crisis, unrestrained commodity markets will make it worse. That’s all the more reason we need stronger, not weaker regulation. Together we need to prevent the current situation from getting worse and from repeating itself in future.

With your support we have the chance to change direction – as we have done before. The last crisis was not that long ago, and lessons learnt will be remembered. We now need to take every opportunity to speak out against opening the doors to more deregulation. We need to expose decision makers siding with big business. The consequences of their actions during this global cost of living crisis will be felt more than ever, but with your help we can fight back.

Thank you for supporting this campaign.

In solidarity,
Jean Blaylock
Campaigner at Global Justice Now

PS. I hope you’ll be able to donate today to strengthen our campaign against the Financial Services and Markets Bill allowing more excessive food speculation.