The dry spring weather in England (while I was driving through the rain in the USA) prompted fears about the grain harvest which, it is good to record here, have proved to be largely unfounded. As in any year there have been winners and losers across the country but the UK wheat yield is estimated to be just 4% below the 5-year average. And oilseed yields have been very good.
And the price that you get for your grain today is over two and a half times what you would have got in January 2000 – the International Grains Council’s daily grains and oilseed index stands at 274 (January 2000 was a baseline of 100).
And here is a link to an interesting blog about grain markets.
Predicting grain yields and prices seem to be at least as challenging as predicting bird numbers – although the overall trends for yields and prices is up and the overall trend for farmland birds is down.
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I think your currency analysis is inaccurate – £1 in 1970 would be worth c£14 today taking RPI and av earnings. $1 in 1970 was worth .41p and today .62p. In real prices the wheat prices has declined – see graph at http://www.choicesmagazine.org/magazine/article.php?article=90 fig 1 right hand side of page
That suggests the lack of ‘on farm profitability’ has triggered the levels of bio-diversity, as farmers intensifed to make a profit and still do so.