The UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics has published a special 24-page issue of its periodical, "ARE Update," focusing on the causes and consequences of the food price crisis. The issue is available for downloading as a PDF at: http://www.agecon.ucdavis.edu/extension/update/.

The special issue summarizes research conducted by members of the Giannini Foundation of Agriculture Economics, a collaboration of the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and UC Berkeley. The research was presented at a symposium convened by the Giannini Foundation and the UC Agricultural Issues Center on Oct. 10, 2008, at UC Berkeley.

Research topics include:

• Food price boom and bust
• Impacts of recent commodity price fluctuations on farms in California and a historical perspective on prospects for the future
• Speculators, storage and the price of rice
• Agricultural research, productivity and food commodity prices
• Food prices and the welfare of poor consumers
• The global food crisis: identification of the vulnerable and policy responses