Climbing food prices have helped fan political unrest in countries with high poverty rates and unemployment, toppling Tunisia’s president in January and spilling into Egypt, Yemen and Jordan. “Today the real risk of a global food crisis exists,” French Farm Minister Bruno Le Maire said.

Bangladesh, worried about rising food prices, said it would speed up its purchases of grains.

The FAO’s food price index rose for a seventh consecutive month in January, passing its 2008 peak even before this week’s gains in grains prices.

US wheat futures rallied to near 2-1/2 year highs as concerns mount about yields from the US winter wheat crop, setting the stage for a five percent gain over the week.

A massive winter storm sweeping across the United States and more cold weather expected next week pose a threat to the country’s hard red winter wheat crop. Disappointing US weekly export data also helped spur the rise.

Corn rose nearly half a percent to $6.64-1/2 a bushel, heading for a four percent weekly rise.

Brent crude rose almost half a percent to above $102 a barrel as Egypt’s volatile situation kept markets on edge.

Brent for March gained 38 cents to $102.15 a barrel, after touching $103.37 on Thursday, the highest intraday price since Sept. 26, 2008.

Front-month Brent has rallied more than $7 since unrest in Egypt started 10 days ago, from about $95 a barrel on Jan. 25. That 8 percent gain is more than a third of last year’s increase of 22 percent.

Copper rebounded back toward Thursday’s five-digit record high, but analysts said bulls may have to wait until Chinese investors return from Lunar New Year celebrations before making a clear break higher above $10,000 a ton. It rose $38 to $9,968, up just over 4.5 percent on the week.

“Generally the market is pricing in a more positive macro outlook than it had been,” said Gayle Berry, analyst at Barclays Capital.

“The stream of buoyant economic data that we had out this week ... were all encouraging.”

The brighter economic outlook, however, tarnished gold’s safe-haven appeal and it ticked lower after rising more than 1 percent the previous day, ahead of US January non-farm payroll data.

Sugar prices rose, gaining 1.8 percent to 32.63 cents, but well below Wednesday’s 30-year high of 36.08 cents a lb as the market digested damage to Australia’s crop from cyclone Yasi.

Prices had rallied early this week on worries that the storm, which slammed into the coast with winds of 180 miles per hour or more, may have wiped out the cane crop.

But analysts stopped short of revising down the estimates for the 2011/12 Australia crop season starting in June as sugar from the recently-ended season is safe in warehouses and is being shipped to traditional buyers such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan.