For a brief period it looked like "Food Crisis 2.0", or another "great grain robbery"-the episode in 1973 when a Russian harvest failure sent commodity prices soaring. Spot prices for wheat rose by 24% in July, and by more than 50% between the start of June and August 6th. On August 2nd and 4th futures prices for September contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade rose by more than 5%, the biggest daily increases since the end of the 2007-08 food-price spike. Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, announced a ban on wheat exports from August 15th. Ukraine this week said it was considering export quotas. Shares in many food-processing firms slumped.
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