World food price index rebounds from three-year low, says UN agency

The United Nations food agency’s world price index rebounded in March from a three-year low, boosted by increases for vegetable oils, meat and dairy products.

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) price index, which tracks the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 118.3 points in March, up from a revised 117.0 points the previous month, the agency said on Friday (Apr 5).

The February reading was the lowest for the index since February 2021 and marked a seventh consecutive monthly decline.

International food prices have fallen sharply from a record peak in March 2022 at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of fellow crop exporter Ukraine.

The FAO’s latest monthly reading was 7.7 per cent below the year-earlier level, it said.

In March, the agency’s vegetable oil price index jumped 8 per cent month on month, the dairy index gained nearly 2.9 per cent for a sixth straight monthly rise, while its meat index added 1.7 per cent.

GET BT IN YOUR INBOX DAILY

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign UpVIEW ALL

Those gains outweighed declines for cereals, which shed 2.6 per cent from February, and for sugar, which fell 5.4 per cent.

In separate cereal supply and demand estimates, the FAO nudged up its forecast for world cereal production in 2023/24 to 2.841 billion metric tons from 2.840 million projected last month, up 1.1 per cent from the previous season. REUTERS