Green Blog: A Bit of Relief on Food Prices

World food prices ended the year with a slight decline, and for 2012 as a whole they were 7 percent below prices of 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported on Thursday.

Food prices have been one of the most troubling aspects of the international economic situation for several years now, so this is a spot of good news. But prices, driven by rising demand in developing countries and supply constraints that include climate change, remain well above levels of the 1990s. The price run-ups in recent years, particularly in 2008 and 2011, have led to the biggest increases in world hunger in decades.

The 2012 declines reported by the F.A.O. were concentrated among some of the higher-value commodities like sugar, oils and dairy products. The most important and politically sensitive prices, for the grains that supply most human calories, were down only 2.4 percent in 2012 from the previous year.

Grain prices soared in the summer, in large measure because of a drought in the United States that cut farm output, then declined modestly toward the end of the year as the overall global supply situation became somewhat clearer.

It?s early in the year, of course, but prospects for 2013 are murky at best. The extraordinary heat in Australia, which is in the heart of its growing season now, is not going to help, and a continuing widespread drought in the United States could spell trouble when planting starts this spring.

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/a-bit-of-relief-on-food-prices/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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