This paper discusses the current food crisis having manifested itself in high prices of most major food crops, posing the risk of serious hardship for consumers, and especially the most vulnerable poor. One perspective suggests that the current situation is the result of the globe running up against the limits of its capacity to supply food. This paper focuses on the second perspective, which does not focus directly on physical or production technology capacity constraints, but instead sees the current crisis at least in part as the product of the risky nature of agricultural production. Viewed from this perspective, the current crisis is a particular manifestation of the tendency of agricultural markets to occasionally produce supply/demand imbalances that can cause pronounced spikes, as well as collapses, in prices.