The current crisis proves that agroenergy is not responsible for price rise. The deterioration of terms of trade is one of the historic factors behind underdevelopment, which should be understood not as a stage of development but rather a specific and distorted form in which peripheral economies are inserted into the world capitalist system. For the majority of these economies, colonial relations built around the export of raw materials were the primary cause of this trait. In the 21st century, some of these countries have slightly greater control over their economies thanks to the expansion of the evolving industrial base. But these few exceptions only prove the rule: internal patterns of wealth distribution dominate and this expansion is limited for the most part to nuclei of mineral or agricultural exports. Thus income is concentrated in productive systems that remain subject to the ups and downs of global trade in raw materials. No decline Since 2003, according to the Commodity Research Bureau (CRB), the average price of 24 agricultural raw materials on world markets has increased by 50 per cent. However, widening the time frame to the period from 1974-2004. Only a part of this decline has been reversed since 2003. It is also important to evaluate on a yearly basis the factors behind this recent price increase in order to differentiate structural elements from those related to speculation. Between 2002-2004, there was a rise in the consumption of high-protein foods, primarily meat and milk products, by the poor in developing countries, including China, India, and Brazil. At almost exactly the same time, the US dramatically increased its consumption of ethanol, which drove up the demand for wheat. This period of growth in demand was followed by a phase in which there was a scarcity of supply. Between 2004-2006 world cereal production dropped significantly as a result of climatic factors, whether droughts in China and Australia or hurricanes in Central America and the Caribbean. This decreased the world cereal reserves at a time that consumption was on the rise. Then in 2007 speculation emerged as the factor responsible for the sustained increase in prices: in a climate of economic uncertainty, many investors sought shelter in commodity funds, agricultural and non-agricultural. There are thus two distinct elements driving the current price increases: one is financial; the other is the hitherto unheard of shift in demand: the expansion of consumption in poor countries. The former is transitory, while the latter could result in a structural change of the flux and intensity of the trade in foods and raw materials. Lessons Though these dynamics are still underway, certain lessons can already be drawn. The first regards the risks implicit in dependence on exports of raw materials. The second is the necessity of having a counterweight to economic policy to broaden the range of producers that benefit from cyclical increases in the demand for food. The strengthening of small agricultural producers and farmer cooperatives, for example, would widen the distribution of wealth in a way that would increase the chances of sustainable growth. The current crisis is a clear refutation of the neo-Malthusian thesis that agroenergy is primarily responsible for increases in commodity prices, which minimised the considerable speculative component, recognised even by the US government, which has proposed joint action by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (which oversees the futures markets for these products) and the Security Exchange Commission (which regulates financial markets). In contrast, agroenergy emerges from the current financial crisis as a safe haven of real consistency and strategic continuity. Even if global demand for commodities declines in the short term, the challenge of remaking the energy network for the 21st century has just begun. Agroenergy can help sustain the expansion of poor countries and usher in a new dynamic of trade independence by industrialising biofuel crop farming and creating bridges between family agriculture and a peak sector of the global economy that is here to stay.