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Today is an historic day. For the first time ever, a bushel of wheat is going for more than $10.

But in real terms, wheat is very cheap. This is from a great article in The Economist on the amazing story of wheat (no, really):

In 1815 a gigantic volcanic eruption at Tambora in Indonesia led to the famous “year without a summer”. New England had frosts in July. France had bitter cold in August. Wheat prices reached a level that would never be seen again in real terms, nearly $3 a bushel. Thomas Robert Malthus was then at the height of his fame and the harvest failure seemed to bear out his pessimism. In 1798 he had forecast a population crash, based on the calculation that it was impossible to improve wheat yields as fast as people made babies (each new baby can make more babies; each new field of grain leaves less new land to cultivate).

Posted by edelfenbein at December 17, 2007 2:10 PM