BLBG:World Food Prices Fell in August as Costs of Cooking Oils, Dairy Declined
World food prices dropped in August as the cost of cooking oils and dairy products fell, the Food and Agriculture Organization said.
An index of 55 food commodities fell to 231.1 points in August from 231.9 points in July, the United Nation’s Rome-based FAO said in a report on its website today. The gauge also dropped in July from 233.2 in June. It was at an all-time high of 237.7 in February.
The cost of living is rising across the world. U.S. consumer prices advanced 0.5 percent in July as food and energy costs rose. In Uganda, where protests erupted in April over rising living expenses, July inflation was almost 19 percent, the fastest pace in 18 years on surging food prices.
Higher food costs have sent “tens of millions of people” into poverty since late 2010, and the world’s hungry people may soon exceed 1 billion again, Oxfam International said Aug. 3. The number of malnourished people in the world fell last year to 925 million from 1.02 billion in 2009, according to the FAO.
World food output will have to rise 70 percent by 2050 as the global population climbs to 9.2 billion from an estimated 6.9 billion in 2010, the FAO estimates. The price of staple foods including corn will more than double in two decades without action, Oxfam said in May.
Agricultural Slowdown
Growth in agricultural output will slow to 1.7 percent a year through 2020, compared with 2.6 percent in the previous decade, FAO and the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report in June.
Discontent about rising food costs helped spark protests across North Africa and the Middle East this year that became known as the Arab Spring, leading to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president, and threatening governments in Syria, Libya and Yemen.
Famine in the Horn of Africa has killed tens of thousands of people, and threatens the lives of 12.4 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, according to the FAO.
Corn futures climbed 15 percent in Chicago last month after rising 7.8 percent in July, while wheat rose 11 percent in August and 17 percent the previous month. U.S. spot prices for milk advanced 1.3 percent in August and 12 percent in July, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Countries will spend $1.29 trillion to import food this year, the most ever and 21 percent more than in 2010, the FAO estimates.
The FAO, set up in 1945 as a specialized UN agency, says it leads international efforts to defeat hunger and helps developing countries improve farming. Its mandate includes lifting nutrition levels and agricultural productivity.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris at rruitenberg@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net
