Category: Policy

Everybody’s talking about the current food price crisis; what it means, what’s causing it; whether it is an opportunity to ask for increased funding. With impeccable timing, IFPRI has released a report examining the extent to which market prices in sub-Saharan Africa reflect changes in global prices. I haven’t read it, and here are IFPRI’s take-home messages:

• Staple food prices in these countries rose 63 percent between mid-2007 and mid-2008, about three-quarters of the proportional increase in world prices.
• Statistical analysis over 5 to 10 years indicates a long-term relationship with world prices in only 13 of the 62 African food prices examined. African rice prices are more closely linked to world markets than are maize prices.
• The global food crisis was unusual in influencing African food prices, probably because of the size of the increase and the fact that it coincided with oil price increases. Policy responses and local factors exacerbated the effect in some cases.

IFPRI does then go on to offer some suggestions.