Our other special focus this week is on Food. Heather Jones, analyst at BB&T Capital Markets,  talked to us a little bit about the reasons for inflation in foods in 2007.

 TWST: What drove inflation during the year and got it above where you expected it to be?

Ms. Jones: Commodities, specifically wheat and vegetable oils. Fuel oil also accelerated later in 2007. Corn also took off late in the year, but it had already risen dramatically going into 2007. Coming into 2007, wheat had stabilized somewhat, but in the second half it surged well beyond what I expected. Soybean oil and other food oils took off as well, registering year-over-year increases well north of 100%.

For the full interview with Ms. Jones, including a complete overview of Food and Processed Food in 2007, and the outlook for 2008, click here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Natural Resources Stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.