World food prices fall for 10th month running in January even as grocery bills remain high
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Lower prices of vegetable oils, dairy and sugar helped pull down the index, while cereals and meat remained largely stable.
PHOTO: ST FILE
ROME – Global food prices continued their longest run of monthly declines in at least three decades, bucking soaring supermarket prices that are squeezing households.
The United Nations food agency’s world price index fell in January for a 10th consecutive month, and is now down some 18 per cent from a record high hit in March 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) price index, which tracks the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 131.2 points in January against 132.2 for December, the agency said on Friday. It is the lowest reading since September 2021.
The December figure was revised down from an original estimate of 132.4.
Lower prices of vegetable oils, dairy and sugar helped pull down the index, while cereals and meat remained largely stable, the FAO said.
In separate cereal supply and demand estimates on Friday, the FAO raised its forecast for global cereal production in 2022 to 2.765 billion tonnes from a previous estimate of 2.756 billion tonnes.
The FAO cereal price index rose just 0.1 per cent month-on-month in January to give a 4.8 per cent increase on the year.
International wheat prices declined 2.5 per cent, as production in Australia and Russia outpaced expectations. Rice, by contrast, jumped 6.2 per cent, driven in part by strong local demand in some Asian exporting countries.
Vegetable oil prices fell 2.9 per cent in January, the dairy index dipped 1.4 per cent and sugar declined 1.1 per cent. Meat slipped a mere 0.1 per cent.
Looking at supply and demand for cereals, the FAO said it expected a record global output of wheat in 2022, thanks to revised crop forecasts from Australia and Russia.
The forecast for world rice production was revised down on the back of lower-than-expected output in China, and is now predicted to decline 2.6 per cent from its all-time high in 2021.
Looking ahead to 2023, the FAO said early indications pointed to a likely expansion of winter wheat cropping in the Northern Hemisphere.
But it warned that high fertiliser costs may impact yields.
The UN gauge remains historically high, and it takes a while for changes to filter through to what people pay at the grocery store.
Those shelf prices have soared around the world on the back of high energy, transport and labour costs, adding to the cost-of-living crisis and worsening global hunger. BLOOMBERG, REUTERS
