CME's Duffy: Food price highs not all speculation

By Emily Chasan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Commodity traders are not to blame for the latest increase in global food prices, despite persistent complaints from politicians that speculators are raising the cost of food globally, CME Group Inc (CME.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Executive Chairman Terry Duffy said on Monday.

"When you have got oil doing what it's doing, and then you've got food prices doing what they are doing ... you can't be surprised when people in Washington are talking about it," Duffy said at the Reuters Exchanges and Trading Summit in New York on Monday.

"But to say that the speculator or the hedge funds or other participants are the root of the problem is really misguided," he added.

Soaring food prices in foods such as bread, milk, rice, beans and other staples, have been blamed recently for pushing up inflation around the world.

But Duffy, a long-time livestock futures trader, said those price increases are mainly a reflection of market fundamentals and not rampant speculation.

"The hedge funds and the growth of those folks has really only deviated by about a 5 percent increase in this whole uptick we have seen," Duffy said. "So it is not the dramatic number that people have said that is out there that is causing the run-up in commodity prices."

Instead, Duffy said his group is looking for ways to offset the problem and help traders work more efficiently, but it is not entirely up to the exchange.

"To think that you are going to take the speculator or the hedge fund out of the game is ridiculous," Duffy said. "People want commodity exposure and they are going to get it. Whether they get it on a regulated platform or an unregulated platform, they will get it."  Continued...