http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/19/news/environ.php

“Food prices have been driven to record highs recently by a variety of factors, among them a spike in the cost of petroleum products, including those used in fertilizers and processing.
“There also has been an increase in the price of grain, which is used to produce biofuels and fed to livestock to satisfy a growing demand for meat in developing countries. The price of rice has more than tripled since January.”
“About two-thirds of the food crops that feed the world rely on pollination by insects or other animals to produce healthy fruits and seeds – included among these are potato crops,” he said, singling out a crop in bee populations worldwide as an example of how one link in the chain can affect the other.”
“Here in Germany, there has been a 25 percent drop in bee populations across the country; in the eastern United States, there has been a 70 percent decline in bee stocks,”said Ahmed Djoghlaf, the executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. “If pollinators disappear, so too will many species of plants. If we take away one link, the chain is broken.”