Staple food prices rise 7 percent in August, says UN’s FAO

ROME

AFP photo

Staple food prices rose 7 percent in August in comparison to the previous year on the back of a rise in commodities other than grains, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Sept. 8. 

Staple food prices rose in August even as grain prices fell, and the outlook for global cereal production improved, the FAO said in a statement. 

The FAO Food Price Index, released on Sept. 8, averaged 165.6 points in August, up 1.9 percent from July and almost 7 percent from a year earlier. 

The monthly jump was mostly driven by cheese and palm oil quotations, while those for wheat, maize and rice all fell.

FAO considerably raised its world cereal production forecast for 2016 to 2,566 million tons, up 22 million tons from July projections. 

FAO’s Cereal Supply and Demand Brief, also released on Sept. 8, attributed the increase primarily to the anticipation of a record global wheat harvest this year and a large upward revision to this year’s maize crop in the United States.

The expected increase in grain output is forecast to boost inventories and push up the global stock-to-use ratio to 25.3 percent, an “even more comfortable [supply and demand] situation than predicted at the start of the season,” FAO said.