Agriculture is the part of the economy related to growing and cultivating food. Almost 40 percent of the world’s workforce works in agriculture (though the nature of that work varies considerably from California to the Congo.)
Short answer: unless we grow it ourselves, our food gets to us because someone puts it on a truck or a boat and sends it to us. But transportation is only one part of our food’s journey…
Food prices move around quite a bit. We hear about small changes on the news and see them in the grocery store. Bigger changes can cause hunger and riots in poorer countries. Economists have a few ways to explain these big changes in food prices, what they call price volatility.
Farming can be a pretty risky business. Not only do farmers have to worry about bad weather or bugs destroying their crops, they also have to worry about food prices which can change dramatically between planting and harvesting.
