After the health crisis of the years 2020 and 2021, the food crisis will have marked 2022. With the war in Ukraine, world food prices have reached their highest levels ever recorded over the whole of 2022, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The peak was reached in March. “World prices for wheat and maize reached record levels during the year,” the UN agency said, with Ukraine being a major producer of cereals, but also of sunflower oil.
The average value of the FAO vegetable oil price index also reached a record for the year, when those of meat and dairy products even reached “their highest annual levels since 1990”. The prices of food products have then started falling again since April, for nine consecutive months.
The December FAO index averaged 132.4 points, falling 1% below its level a year ago in December 2021. “However, for 2022 as a whole (…) the The index averaged 143.7 points, or 14.3% more than the average value for 2021,” FAO points out.
Calm at the end of the year
“It is a good thing that food prices are calming down after two very volatile years,” Máximo Torero, FAO’s chief economist, said in a statement, adding that it was essential to “remain vigilant and focus on alleviating global food insecurity”. “Global food prices remain at high levels, with many commodities near record highs, rice prices rising, and still many risks associated with future supplies,” he said.
The vegetable oil price index, down 6.7%, drove the monthly decline in December. It falls to its lowest level since February 2021, as prices for palm, soybean, rapeseed and sunflower oils all fell in December. The FAO cereal price index is down 1.9% from November, due to greater post-harvest wheat availability in the southern hemisphere and a drop in world prices for maize, except rice.