FAO: Agricultural commodity prices expected to remain high
Dated: 4 June 2008
Agricultural commodity prices should ease from their recent record peaks but over the next 10 years they are expected to average well above their mean levels of the past decade, according to the latest Agricultural Outlook from OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Current high food prices will hit the poor and hungry people hardest, particularly urban net food buyers and rural non-food producers in low income countries.
“The way to address rising food prices is not through protectionism but to open up agricultural markets and to free up the productive capacity of farmers, who have proven repeatedly that they will respond to market incentives,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría at the Outlook’s launch in Paris.
“Governments can also do more to foster growth and development in poor countries, so as to improve the purchasing power of the most vulnerable food buyers.”
In comparing averages of the coming decade with those of the past, real prices, i.e. nominal prices corrected for inflation, are projected to increase in a range from less than 10% for rice and sugar, under 20% for wheat, around 30% for butter, coarse grains and oilseeds to over 50% for vegetable oils, according to the report.
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