Today’s Wall Street Journal article by Scott Kilman makes several noteworthy points, including:

• This year the prices of Illinois corn and soybeans are up 40% and 75%, respectively, from a year ago. Kansas wheat is up 70% or more.
• A growing number of economists and agribusiness executives think the run-ups could last as long as a decade, raising the cost of all kinds of food.
• Not only have prices remained high, but the rally has swept up other commodities such as barley, sorghum, eggs, cheese, oats, rice, peas, sunflower and lentils. In Georgia, the nation’s No. 1 poultry-producing state, slaughterhouses are charging a record wholesale price for three-pound chickens, up 15% from a year ago.
• What’s changed is that powerful new sources of demand are emerging. In addition to U.S. government incentives that encourage businesses to turn corn and soybeans into motor fuel, the growing economies of Asia and Latin America are enabling hundreds of millions of people to spend more on food. A growing middle class in these regions is eating more meat and milk, which in turn is increasing demand for grain to feed livestock.
• The reversal of a long-term trend toward lower grain prices could have profound effects on the world’s ability to feed its poor. Humanitarian groups are cautioning that their budgets for food aid won’t go nearly as far as they did in the past. Roughly 200 million of the 850 million malnourished people in the world’s poorest nations receive some food assistance. “My major concern is that we will lose ground against hunger,” says Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Program.
• American families, which spend 9.9% of their disposable income on food, are facing the fastest-rising food prices in 17 years. In U.S. cities last month, the average retail price of a pound loaf of whole-wheat bread was up 24% from a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Whole milk hit $3.807 a gallon, up 26%.
• The biggest winner is the U.S. Farm Belt, which is primed for an unusually long expansion, even as a nationwide housing slump damps the broader economy. The Agriculture Department expects U.S. net farm income to soar 48% this year to a record $87.1 billion.
• An expected spending spree by farmers is igniting the stocks of several farm suppliers. Shares of implement maker Deere & Co. are up about 76% from a year ago, while seed and herbicide giant Monsanto Co.’s stock is up 79%, and fertilizer maker Mosaic Co.’s shares have more than tripled.
• Futures traders are betting that the price of corn, used for everything from sweetening soda to putting the crunch in snack foods, will climb above $4 next March and stay above that level into 2010. In recent days, Iowa farmers have been selling corn for $3.25 a bushel.
• U.S. farm exports are climbing, dousing the fears of just a few years ago that the U.S. farm sector was on the verge of generating a trade deficit. Agriculture Department economists expect exports to hit a record $79 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, up 15% from last year.
• The burden of higher grain prices is falling heaviest on small businesses, which don’t have the wiggle room that large companies do. Hit by a 35% increase in wheat-flour costs since December, Michael Kalupa, owner of Kalupa’s Bakery in Tampa, Fla., said he has put off plans to buy a new walk-in refrigerator. “Guys like us pretty much have to bite the bullet,” said Mr. Kalupa, president of Retail Bakers of America, a bakers trade group.