The Global Food Price Index Fell for the Fifth Straight Month

The latest quarterly data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization shows that for the fifth straight month global food prices have fallen. But even as global food prices return to 2009 levels, many locales are still struggling with food insecurity.

The new Food Price Index, which measures the price of over fifty food commodities, is now one percent below August prices, and 5.4 percent below prices at the beginning of 2013. Behind the continued decline is sharp drops in international prices for cereal crops.

Though the FAO has revised downward forecasts for global cereal production for the year as whole, production is still expected to be 8 percent higher than for 2012, due in no small part due to an expected 27 percent increase in production of corn in the United States (maize to the rest of the world), compared to last year's drought-reduced levels.

But despite the increases in production and falling prices, the FAO points out several areas that remain hotspots of food insecurity, largely driven by conflict. Syria, Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo all fall into this category. Drought in Namibia has increased food insecurity there. With Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan all getting whacked by a combination of conflict and natural disasters, increasing hunger. North Korea, too needs help, with about 2.8 million people needing food assistance, at least until harvest this month.

Taken alone, this is just a quarterly update on regularly reported stats, showing some modestly positive signs. Prices overall are down, production of cereals up. Taking a longer-term view, the situation remains precarious.

With global population now projected to likely hit 9.6 billion people by 2050, to feed everyone we will need to increase food production 60-110 percent. That means an increase in yields across the board of 2.4 percent annually. Though this data shows that production of cereals will be up well more than that this year, in terms of increasing yields (the amount able to be produced in a given area of land), the situation is different.

According to research published in PLoS One recently, yields for corn are only increasing 1.6 percent annually, with rice yields going up 1 percent, wheat yields up 0.9 percent, and soybean yields up 1.3 percent. The way things are going we will fall well short of what is needed to keep up with population growth.

We can change this trend in a number of ways: Making more efficient use of lands currently under cultivation, increasing crop yields though improved agricultural technique, reducing the massive amount of food wasted around the world (one-third of everything produced), as well as adopting more plant-based diets (instead of feeding grain to animals for our food). We can also put more land under cultivation, but this ultimately just decreases biodiversity as well as increases carbon emissions.

As the highlighted hotspots show, it's not merely an issue of producing food. If an area is in constant conflict, or ravaged by natural disasters (something that climate change potentially can increase, it's worth noting) then access to food, no matter how much is capable of being produced and for what price it's sold, becomes restricted.

To some level this is a problem that will always be with us, as it has been since time immemorial, but there's the potential for a deadly nexus of events here: Crop yields and production not keeping up with population growth, and climate change is making extreme weather events more likely and deadly. Combined with reducing yields of key crops and increased potential for violence due to all these factors, food insecurity is getting worse.