WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- The announcement by Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, that the globe's main provider of food aid may have to start rationing is not just bad news for countries like Afghanistan and Ethiopia that depend on its supplies.

It's grim news for everybody. The global economy is just about coping with the subprime crisis, the fall of the dollar and oil at $100 a barrel. But the inflationary surge in food prices could prove to be the final straw.

Wheat prices hit $24 a bushel this week in the futures markets, having been $3 a bushel four years go. That dwarfs the rise in oil prices.

This problem has been coming for some time, driven by three separate factors. The first is overall population increase. The second is that emergent economies like China and India are climbing up the prosperity chain and demanding more meat protein, which takes eight times as much land to produce as vegetable protein. The third is that short-sighted government subsidies for biofuels are eroding the amount of crops available for eating.

Sheeran says the immediate problems are rising food prices and a lack of funds for the U.N. body to buy food aid, while demand from poor countries is increasing. Her statement echoes earlier warnings from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization that the soaring cost of grains and cereals was becoming "a major global concern."