Basic commodities are defying growing productions as global food prices kept its bullish tone and picked up in January, with sugar and cereals leading the charge, based on the monthly figures released by the United Nations on Thursday.
Breaking the Odds
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported on Thursday that the Food Price Index, which tracks the five major groups, including cereals, vegetable oils, dairy, meat and sugar, in terms of their monthly changes in global prices, touched its highest peak in two years and sixth consecutive monthly increase as it came in at an average 173.8% in January.
The recent record also showed a 2.1% jump from its revised December value and improved 16.4% compare to a year prior.
While there is a building production across the world, global food prices were just too steady to shrug off the increasing supply as sugar prices advanced 9.9% last month as protracted supply in top producers, Brazil, Thailand and India, were expected while cereal prices jumped in 3.4% on the same period despite recording an output of 681 million metric tons.
The organization also expected that the global cereal output is on track to reach its all-time record high, with wheat inventories and grain stocks estimated to surge 8.3% and 0.7% annual increase respectively.
Vegetable oil prices registered a 1.8% increase as global inventory levels of palm oils slowdown due to a sluggish recovery in Southeast Asia.
Both meat and dairy prices remained unchanged last month as the effect of herd rebuilding in Australia pushed prices lower while production of dairy products marked a 50% decline.