{{Global food prices fell by 7.0% in 2012 from the level the previous year, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Thursday, assuaging worries a few months ago that the world could be heading for a food crisis.}}<\/p>\n
The FAO added that prices had fallen in December for the third month in a row.<\/p>\n
The Rome-based FAO’s Food Price Index averaged 212 points in 2012, a drop of 7.0% owing largely to falls in the prices of sugar, dairy products and oil.<\/p>\n
According to the FAO’s index, a monthly measure of changes in a basket of food commodities, prices dropped in December by 1.1% to 209 points, continuing a descent from the 263 points registered in August.<\/p>\n
“The result marks a reversal from the situation last July, when sharply rising prices prompted fears of a new food crisis,” said Jomo Sundaram from FAO’s Economic and Social Development Department.<\/p>\n
“But international coordination…as well as flagging demand in a stagnant international economy, helped ensure the price spike was short-lived and calmed markets so that 2012 prices ended up below the previous year\u2019s levels,” he said.<\/p>\n
After surging between July and September 2012 due to uncertainties over production and tightening supplies, cereal export prices then dropped because of weaker demand for feed and industrial uses.<\/p>\n
The sharpest declines registered in 2012 were for sugar (17.1%), dairy products (14.5%) and oils (10.7%), while decreases were much more modest for cereals (2.4%) and meat (1.1%).<\/p>\n
In December, the FAO oils index averaged 197 points (down 1.9% on November), while the meat index averaged 176 points and the sugar index averaged 274 points — both marginally down on the previous month. <\/p>\n
AFP <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Global food prices fell by 7.0% in 2012 from the level the previous year, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Thursday, assuaging worries a few months ago that the world could be heading for a food crisis.}} The FAO added that prices had fallen in December for the third month in a row. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5124"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5124"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}