The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said today, Thursday, that global food prices rose for the tenth month in a row last March, reaching their highest levels since June 2014, and the prices of vegetable oils, meat and dairy products came in the forefront. It has seen big leaps and bounds.
The FAO Food Price Index - which measures the monthly changes of a basket of grains, vegetable oils, dairy products, meat and sugar - averaged 118.5 points in March, compared to a slightly revised reading of 116.1 points in February the previous year.
The previous reading for February was 116.0 points.
The Rome-based FAO said in a statement that global cereal crops are still on their way to a record annual level in 2020, adding that initial indications are of a new increase in production this year (2021).
The FAO slightly revised its forecast for the 2020 cereal season to 2.765 billion tons, compared to a previous estimate of 2.761 billion tons, which means an increase of 2% year-on-year.