"Uncertainty is profitable. The Food and Agriculture Organisation is worried about price swings, even though prices are far from their 2011 peaks . Volatile prices create markets for hedge funds to trade and gamble on future trends. Traders, enabled by lax futures regulations, are perhaps the only people to see the bright side of the beating sun.
Which is why it's worth looking to history. Record-breaking weather, farmers losing crops, banks repossessing land from the poor, a president scorned by his opponents for socialism. We've seen this before. Such were the conditions of the dust bowl in the 1930s. Then, the drought stretched across most of the decade.By 1938, 80% of the Great Plains had been damaged by wind erosion . In large part, it was because farmers on small farms weren't taking care of the soil. What would bring farmers to the point of destroying the soil on which they depended? Most of them were deeply indebted to banks, and hanging on by their fingernails. Environmental destruction staved off financial oblivion."
