Food price volatility may increase

10 October 2011, Rome - Food price volatility featuring high prices is likely to continue and possibly increase, making poor farmers, consumers and countries more vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity, the United Nations' three Rome-based agencies said in the global hunger report published today.  

Small, import-dependent countries, particularly in Africa, are especially at risk.  Many of them still face severe problems following the world food and economic crises of 2006-2008, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) said in "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011" (SOFI), an annual flagship report which they jointly produced this year.

Such crises, including in the Horn of Africa, "are challenging our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by half in  2015," the heads of the three agencies — Jacques Diouf of FAO, Kanayo F. Nwanze of IFAD and Josette Sheeran of WFP — warned in a preface to the report.  

Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture

The following link will take you to an Issue Brief entitled, “An Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture: What to Expect from the G-20 Summit”, authored by Robert Paarlberg, B. F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.


This is the second in a series of Issue Briefs commissioned by the Global Agricultural Development Initiative. Issues Briefs offer factual and analytical information and resources to policymakers and other non-governmental stakeholders to advance understanding of the potential implications of major developments, events, and decisions on U.S. agricultural development and food security policy.


Click here to read the full Issue Brief (PDF).