The other oil shock: Vegetable oil prices soar

KUANTAN, Malaysia: Rising prices for cooking oil in India are forcing residents of Mumbai to ration every drop. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel for trucks sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw material.

This is the other oil shock. Shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the latest, most striking example of a developing global problem: costly food.

The Food and Agriculture Organization, an agency of the United Nations, reported that its index of export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs climbed 37 percent last year. That was on top of a 14 percent increase in 2006, and the trend has accelerated in the past few weeks.

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No category of food prices has risen as quickly this winter as edible oils, sometimes with tragic results. When a Carrefour store in Chongqing, China, announced a limited-time cooking oil promotion in November, a stampede of would-be buyers left three people dead and 31 injured.

Cooking oil may seem a trifling expense in the West. But in the developing world, cooking oil is an important source of calories and represents one of the biggest cash outlays for poor families, which grow much of their own food but have to buy oil in which to cook it.