World food prices fell slightly in June, ending a five-month spike in the wake of a sharp drop in dairy prices, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Thursday.
FAO kept its cereal production forecast for the year unchanged from June but up 1.2 percent from 2018, with most of the growth coming from increased wheat production.
The FAO Food Price Index - which measures the monthly changes in a basket of cereals, vegetable oils, dairy products, meat and sugar - registered 173.0 points last month, compared to a revised average of 173.5 in May.
The previous reading of the previous month was at 172.4 points.
The FAO index for dairy prices fell by 11.9% compared to May, but is still up 9.4% since the beginning of the year.
The fall in prices came in June due to increased export opportunities and weak import demand.
The FAO index for vegetable prices fell 1.6 percent from the previous month, touching its lowest level since December, mainly affected by a fall in the price of palm oil and soybean oil.
On the other hand, the grain price index rose 6.7% compared to May, and recorded a rise of 3.8% since the beginning of the year due to a significant increase in corn export prices for reasons of the most important expectations of a sharp drop in exports from the United States, the world's largest exporter.
The FAO index of meat prices increased 1.5% while the sugar price index rose 4.2% from a month ago.
In its third forecast this year, FAO expected cereal production to reach 2.685 billion tons, unchanged from the June report and 1.2 percent above last year's levels.
The global cereal consumption forecast for 2019-2020 has increased slightly, and now stands at more than 2.708 billion tonnes, up 1 percent from 2018-2019, FAO said.