Thumbnail Image

How Much Did Developing Country Domestic Staple Food Prices Increase During the World Food Crisis?

How Much Have They Declined?

Year of publication 2009

Author David Dawe and Cristian Morales-Opazo;Agriculture and Economic Development Analysis Division

Product type Document

Series title FAO Agricultural Economics Working Paper

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) Using data from a new FAO price database, we found that domestic staple food prices in developing countries typically increased by 48 percent in real terms during the world food crisis. Given that most of the world’s poor are net food consumers, such large price increases almost certainly had severe impacts on the effective purchasing power of the poor, which in turn likely affected the number of meals eaten as well as the nutritional quality of food consumed. While domestic prices have declined from their peaks in most countries, the declines have been small thus far and real prices are typically 19 percent higher than they were two years earlier, even after accounting for inflation. Thus, many poor people are faced with higher food prices in the midst of a global economic slowdown.

Language English

Also available in:
No results found.

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Thumbnail Image
    Book (stand-alone)
    A simple price monitoring tool to assess monthly changes in food prices 2012
    Also available in:
    No results found.
    Food prices have always been volatile, but they may become even more volatile in the future given the new linkages between oil and grain prices. These new linkages are due to several factors that have converged in the past few years. While technologies that can convert grains to fuel have existed for some time, it is only recently that they have become profitable enough to create a stronger link between oil and grain prices than has existed in the past. In addition to improvements in biofuel tec hnologies, policies in several developed countries (e.g. mandates, tariffs) have also played a key role by lowering the level of oil prices at which this linkage becomes operable. Finally, developments in supply and demand in world oil markets also play a role: if oil prices are at a relatively high level in the medium term due to continued economic growth in developing countries and increased difficulties in finding new cheap sources of supply, this makes it easier for grains to be competitive as a source of fuel, providing yet another reason why there are likely to be stronger linkages between grain prices and oil prices.
  • Thumbnail Image
  • Thumbnail Image
    Document
    Analyzing the impact of food price increases: assumptions about marketing margins can be crucial 2009
    Also available in:
    No results found.
    This paper shows the importance of explicitly considering marketing margins in analyses of the impact of price changes on the welfare of different segments of the population. Failure to acknowledge the implicit marketing assumptions embedded in an analysis that assumes equal percentage changes for both farm and consumer prices leads to a bias towards finding negative impacts of higher food prices. In addition, the bias is not necessarily uniform across income quintiles; thus, failure to explicit ly consider marketing margins could lead one to conclude that the poor are hurt relatively more than the rich by a price increase when in fact the opposite is true, or vice-versa. We provide rules of thumb and simple techniques that may help to ascertain, in many circumstances, the percentage change in consumer prices that is appropriate for a given percentage change in farm prices.
Show more

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

No results found.