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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations “FAO” said that global food prices rose for the seventh month in a row, and all major groups, except for sugar, recorded gains last month.
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The FAO Food Price Index, which measures monthly changes for a basket of grains, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar, recorded an average of 107.5 points last month, compared to 105.2 points in November.
The figure recorded in November before the amendment was 105.0 points.
For the year 2020 as a whole, the benchmark index scored 97.9 points on average, which is the highest level in 3 years and equates to a 3.1 percent increase over 2019. But it is still more than 25 percent below its historic peak in 2011.
Vegetable oil prices continued to post strong gains, jumping 4.7 percent month-on-month in December, after rising more than 14 percent in November. For the year 2020 as a whole, the index rose 19.1 percent, compared to 2019.
The grain index registered a more modest increase of 1.1 percent in December, compared to the previous month. During 2020, the index rose 6.6 percent on average from 2019 levels.
The sugar index bucked the rise recorded in other indices, as the average prices fell 0.6 percent in December. However, this sub-index recorded, in 2020 as a whole, an increase of 1.1 percent from the levels of 2019.
The FAO did not release an update of its global grain harvest forecast in January.
And last month, the organization revised its forecast for the 2020 grain season by downgrading, for the third month in a row, reducing it to 2.742 billion tons from 2.750 billion tons in the past.
Source: Reuters
