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Food prices steady, but UN urges vigilance
Story Date: 9/7/2012
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Source: MEATINGPLACE, 9/6/12
Global food prices were steady in August, with lower sugar costs offsetting higher meat and dairy prices, but the international community needs to be vigilant to prevent a future rise from hurting millions of people over the coming months, the UN said.
“This is reassuring," José Graziano da Silva, director general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said in a statement. "Although we should remain vigilant, current prices do not justify talk of a world food crisis, but the international community can and should move to calm markets further.”
The FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly price changes for a basket of foods including meat, dairy and sugar and cereals, averaged 213 points in August, unchanged from July, when prices surged 6 percent. While still high, the index stands 25 points below its peak of 238 in February 2011.
Meat prices, particularly those of poultry and pork, rose in August after three consecutive months of decline.
UN officials said that to prevent a food crisis, there must be a coordinated response by food producers to deal with price spikes, and improvement in the transparency of global markets. In the long term, policies should focus on the increasing global population and climate change, which has led to droughts and floods in many countries, affecting food production, they said.
Separately, Oxfam America issued a report suggesting that existing research is significantly underestimating the potential impact of climate change on food prices by not taking into account extreme weather such as droughts, floods and heat waves.
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