Food prices crises - FAO index reaches historic high in February 2011
The FAO, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, composite food commodities index reached a new high in February. This again highlights the ”food versus fuel” issue and emphasizes the importance of focusing efforts on developing biofuels that do not compete for prime agricultural land. The ultimate feedstock of the Chemrec process is forest harvest residues which gives us confidence that our path is sustainable - economically and ethically.
Below are the latest FAO food price index diagrams showing the development over time. The FAO Food Price Index is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, composed of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar. It consists of the average of these five commodity group price indices (representing 55 quotations), weighted with the average export shares of each of the groups for 2002-2004.
The figure shows that long-term food prices are at an historic high. Currently they are higher than they were in 2008 during the previous spike in food prices that sent shock waves around the globe and led to various investigations concerning food prices. While it has been shown that the price hike in 2008 could, among others, be traced back to the way commodities used to be traded on the financial markets, the current surge in prices are largely due to weather and related climatic conditions, i.e. scarcity.
Please follow these links if you are interested in further reading:
What is driving food crises? (Video) Javier Blas, commodities editor, explains why the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation are giving the global food market 'critical' status, and considers what must be done to stave off a repeat of the 2007/2008 crisis.
http://video.ft.com/v/679555154001/What-s-driving-food-prices-