The depression was exacerbated by harvest shortfalls resulting from unusually bad weather during 1626 40.
Corn and soybeans have nearly tripled in price in the last two years, for many reasons: harvest shortfalls, increasing demand by the Asian middle class, government mandates for corn to produce ethanol and, most recently, the flooding in the Midwest.
The high dependence on food imports makes Egypt vulnerable, particularly in years of domestic harvest shortfalls or higher world prices, when this ratio can increase substantially.
But bumper crops in India and Pakistan should help offset a shortfall in Thai exports.The excellent harvest in India convinced politicians, once fearful of food inflation, to lower protectionist defences.
Some analysts, such as the Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown, say the US department of agriculture has underestimated the shortfall in the corn and soy bean harvest.
Drought in Russia (the world's third-largest exporter) Kazakhstan and Ukraine will likely lead to an unexpected shortfall of 3.7% in the 2010 wheat harvest.
Insufficiency and bad rainfalls dispersion during the 2009 harvest in Niger have caused important cereals and fodder shortfalls.
The worst shortfall of labour in 2017 was in the crucial harvest month of September, when 29% of vacancies were unfilled.
In South Darfur, the 2007 cereal harvest was considerably lower than in 2006, contributing to an overall shortfall in cereal stocks.
The World Food Program, the largest distributor of food aid in North Korea, has said that although this year's rice harvest improved over last year's, North Korea faces a shortage of about 1.5 million tons of food, compared with a 2.2 million ton shortfall in 2001, because aid pledges have dried up.
The poor quality of what has been harvested has forced manufacturers to look abroad for much more than that shortfall.
