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PARIS (Reuters) – The U.N. food agency’s world price index rebounded from a three-year low in March, helped by gains in vegetable oils, meat and dairy products.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) price index, which tracks the world’s most traded food products, averaged 118.3 points in March, up from a revised 117.0 points the previous month, the agency said Friday.
February’s reading was the lowest level for the index since February 2021, and the seventh consecutive month of decline.
International food prices have fallen significantly from their record peak in March 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a fellow agricultural exporter.
FAO said its latest monthly measurements were 7.7% lower than the same period last year.
In March, the government agency’s vegetable oil price index rose 8% month-on-month, the dairy index rose nearly 2.9%, the sixth straight month of increases, and the meat index rose 1.7%.
These gains outweighed declines in grains, which fell 2.6%, and sugar, which fell 5.4% since February.
In its individual grain supply and demand estimates, FAO has revised upward its global grain production forecast for 2023/24 from last month’s forecast of 2.84 billion tons to 2.841 billion tons, an increase of 1.1% from the previous season.
(Reporting by Gus Trompis; Editing by Sybil de la Hamide and Mark Potter)
Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.
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