Touch the Soil News #2052 (photo – Vegetables – Courtesy of USDA)
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is a division of the United Nations. The FAO tracks the international prices of five food commodity groups each month and ascribes a number starting with 100 which is the base for the 2014-2016 time frame. The overall index peaked in 2020 at 144.7 (includes the average of all five food commodities). For February 2024, the index has fallen 27.4 points to 117.3 or almost 20 percent.
Worthy of note is the volatilities within the food groups from 2022 to February 2024 as follows:
Meat went from 118.8 to 112.4 – a small drop.
Dairy went from 149.5 to 120.0 – a strong drop.
Cereal grains went from 154.7 to 113.8.7 – a strong drop.
Vegetable oils went from 187.8 to 120.9 – a very strong drop.
Sugar was the only food group that went up from 114.5 in 2022 to 140.8 in February 2024.
You can view the Food Price Index at the following link: https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
