One of the largest food trading firms in the nation is bragging about how drought and food shortages will make them lots of money:

Every so often a business titan forgets himself, drops his guard and tells us what he’s really thinking.

So it was that a big cheese at the world’s largest commodities trader bragged that the worst drought to hit the US since the 1930s – and the worrying volatility in food prices around the world – will be “good for Glencore”.

On one reading, Chris Mahoney, the business titan in question, appeared to be celebrating the destruction of 45 per cent of America’s corn and 35 per cent of its soya bean crops this year. The crisis threatens to push cereal prices to a new record in a move that will put further pressure on the world’s poorest people and raises the prospect of a fresh round of food riots.

Mr Mahoney’s comments have put the spotlight firmly back on food prices, which rose by an average of 6 per cent globally in July, while cereals accelerated considerably faster still, jumping by 17 per cent to within a whisker of their record in April 2008, according to the UN.

“The US weather starting mid-May…has been among the worst three or four years of the century, comparable to the dust bowl years of the mid-30’s,” said Mr Mahoney, Glencore’s head of agriculture, suggesting that it won’t be long before cereal prices hit a new record.

“In terms of the outlook for the balance of the year, the environment is a good one. High prices, lots of volatility, a lot of dislocation, tightness, a lot of arbitrage opportunities [the sale and purchase of an asset to profit from price differences in different markets],” he added.

The usual suspects were suitably appalled, but as Concepcion Calpe of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization noted, it won’t happen because agribusiness in general, and Glencor in particular, “Know this and have been lobbying heavily around the world to water down and halt any reform.”

Our economy is run by and for sociopaths, and they control our food.