Macroeconomic trends have always had some impact on agricultural production, demand, trade and values, but usually much less so than on other commodities such as industrial metals, precious metals and energy. Unless there are fundamental supply and demand influences in play at the same time, agricultural commodities tend to be less exuberant during economic expansions and less depressed during economic contractions. Agricultural production is food, and people have to eat during good times and bad. However, the current global economic contraction appears quite different from most past downturns. Rather than being a reaction to financial excesses, it has been triggered by the political and economic reaction to the spread of a heretofore unkn...