For all the furore over threats of likely food insecurity in various parts of the world, including the Caribbean last year, world food prices actually fell over the just concluded calendar year, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says.
The Report makes a point of stating that, overall, world food commodity prices fell 13.7 percent in 2023 compared with the previous year. The FAO’s cereals price index fell 15.4 percent last year, “reflecting well supplied global markets” compared to 2022, when prices soared after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major grain exporter. The news that global food prices actually dropped last year is likely to come as a shock to many people in the Caribbean who spent much of last year contemplating worrying reports, including reports from UN sources, about impending food security challenges in the region.
Not only did the reports shock people in many parts of the Caribbean who had not, previously, envisaged a food-insecured region, it also sent regional governments into an emergency mode, fashioning plans for a regional Food Security Terminal as part of a wider plan to push back against the food security threat which, reportedly, was staring the region squarely in the face. Currently, one of the leading issues in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is the weight assigned shared mostly by Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago for moving food to the various smaller island territories where the need is regarded as greatest.
Globally, the FAO reported recently that while concerns had eased over wheat and maize supplies, that had not been the case in the instance of rice which the UN agency said had been affected by “the impact of the El Nino weather phenomenon and India restricting exports.” These developments, the FAO report said, had resulted in a 21% in rice price increases last year. “The vegetable oil price index posted the biggest fall last year, dropping 32.7 percent, thanks to improved supplies and reduced use for biofuel production. Sugar prices, on the contrary, jumped 26.7 percent overall last year,” the FAO report adds though it says that sugar prices “retreated from their highs in December thanks to Brazil stepping up exports and reduced use for biofuels.”
Even as the FAO’s own overall food price index has since dropped, there are reports, nonetheless, that consumer food prices in many countries are rising considerably and often faster than their overall inflation rate.
