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Food prices: from crisis to stability on World Food Day 2011

  • 16/10/2011
  • FAO

Food prices - from crisis to stability has been chosen as this year’s World Food Day theme to shed some light on this trend and what can be done to mitigate its impact on the most vulnerable. At the level of net food importing countries, price spikes can hurt poor countries by making it much more expensive for them to import food for their people. In 2010 the world’s Low Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDCs) spent a record US$164 billion on food imports, representing a rise of 20 percent on the year before. At the level of individuals, people living on less than US$1.25 a day may need to skip a meal when food prices rise. Farmers are hurt too because they badly need to know the price their crops are going to fetch at harvest time, months away. If high prices are likely they plant more. If low prices are forecast they plant less and cut costs.

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