And a battle it certainly is. There are basically two sides, offering two versions of "crisis." What version of crisis we accept is crucial to formulating policies to combat its effects. The fate of whole ecosystems and populations hinges on what drives higher commodity prices. Do we blame rising demand and tight supplies or the early effects of climate change? Or do we seek answers in the role that financial speculation, neoliberal restructuring, and biofuel cultivation play alongside those other factors? The first version, which serves the interests of the international finance institutions, is represented by developed nations such as the U.S. and the UK and their corporations. It focuses on the role that increased demand from China and India and tightened supplies has played in driving prices skywards. Meanwhile, farmers in Africa and elsewhere remain too unproductive, with dilapidated road systems, to get their produce to market. They are, in the lingo, in need of "modernization." Along with that, the leaders of the FAO and the World Bank agree, must come technological innovation. The language of the "new Green Revolution" is being mobilized with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the vanguard.

The second version comes from peasant organizations such as Via Campesina and a clutch of eloquent NGOs, such as Practical Action, Food First, GRAIN, Movement for the Global South, and the World Development Movement. Its diagnosis of the current crisis is far deeper. Rather than being a short term rise in food and oil prices, this version tends to see the crisis as rooted in the longer-term neoliberal project. Food prices in poor countries have been allowed to rocket by a neoliberal system where government-run distribution networks are dismantled, grain stores abandoned, large corporations dictate prices, and indebted nations and farmers convert crops for export to earn prized foreign currency.