Touch the Soil News #1794 (Feature Photo – Wheat Harvest – CCA SA 3.0 Unported, Michael Gabler)
The Food and Agriculture Organization, which tracks global prices of key food products, reflects some noticeable increases in the agricultural groups of meat, dairy, cereal grains, vegetable oils and sugar. Averaged together, the price of these food groups, from February 2021 through February 2022 is up 21 percent – one of the largest increase in modern history. Much of this increase can be attributed to supply chain kinks from Covid.
Of note, is that the food price index went up from 135.4 in January to 140.7 in February, which may contain early pressure from fears of agricultural production declines from Ukraine. Ukraine one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and soybeans. Pressure also could have come from concerns over fertilizer, of which Russia is the world’s largest exporter. You see the FAO Food Price Index charts here: https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
Stay tuned as we will be reporting monthly on changes in the world food price index.
