Food prices rose 12.6% from February to March, the largest monthly jump on record, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said on Friday. The war in Ukraine is part of the cause.
FAO Director General Qu Dongyu told the organization’s council that staples such as wheat and vegetable oils have been “soaring lately, imposing extraordinary costs on global consumers, particularly the poorest.” Vulnerable consumers and countries, he warned, are losing purchasing power as food and fuel bills climb. Fertilizer is getting more expensive too, which Qu said could lead farmers to use less of it and harvest smaller crops.
The FAO Food Price Index, created in 1990, follows cereals, vegetable oils, meat, dairy and sugar. Boubaker Ben Belhassen, who directs the agency’s trade and markets division, said cereals, vegetable oils and meat all reached all-time highs. Sugar and dairy rose significantly as well.
Trouble before the war
The index had been climbing through 2021, partly because of the COVID pandemic. Ben Belhassen listed the other drivers: bad weather, higher energy and transport costs, pricier fertilizer and strong demand abroad. “This has driven prices already before the war in Ukraine,” he told reporters in Rome. “Disruption to exports due to the conflict in Ukraine has exacerbated the already difficult situation putting further upward pressure on prices.”
Expected export disruptions and losses from Russia’s invasion have also unsettled the market, the FAO said.
Who depends on Russia and Ukraine
The two countries supply about a third of global wheat exports, 20% of maize and about 80% of sunflower oil exports. Fifty countries get at least 30% of their wheat from Moscow and Kyiv. For some, Egypt and Lebanon among them, the share tops 70%.
One item bucked the trend. Rice prices were largely unchanged from February and stood 10% below their level a year earlier.
