Britain was thus able to concentrate on manufacturing and import its food and raw materials.

ECONOMIST: World trade

Dutch conservative MEP Peter van Dalen said it was time to "stop talking and move to action", claiming that biodiversity is the basis of all the EU's food products and raw materials.

BBC: Biodiversity debate

By and large, British savings were financing mines, railways and frontier expansion in the New World so that it could produce food for British workers and raw materials for British factories.

ECONOMIST: Business books (5)

China is a very big consumer of oil, of food, of all kinds of raw materials.

NPR: Chinese Stimulus May Affect Commodity Prices

Firms that sell raw materials to other food companies can benefit, for one.

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SOEs in sectors like equipment manufacturing, raw-materials production and food processing.

ECONOMIST: The other China

Companies with heavy exposure to raw materials, particularly in the food and beverage segments, have to balance rising input costs with consumer demand.

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The premise: Buy up lots of small companies in a fragmented business--such as used cars, funeral homes, office products, food distribution and medical diagnostics--then purchase raw materials in bulk to cut costs.

FORBES: Wrong Address

And they would have to decide not just which crops to plant but whether to use them for food, carbon capture or things like bio-industrial raw materials.

ECONOMIST: A prospect of plenty

But it's vital that any prioritization of agriculture is not at the expense of the trade in raw materials, according to Ousmane Badiane, Africa director for the International Food Policy Research Institute.

CNN: Study: Africa can feed itself in a generation