Friday, May 04, 2012 -
Food prices have declined in the period from March to April 2014 after three successive months of steady inclines, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Friday.
The decrease in prices is largely due to the increase in global meat production, which is expected to grow 2 percent this year, the UN agency said.
Also helping to bring prices down is the record production of cereals, largely driven by farms in the United States. However, other strong cereal producers – including Kazakhstan, Ukraine, China, and Morocco – are expected to see strong declines in their production levels in 2012.
The fall in global food prices is surely good news for Central Asia’s two most impoverished states, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Mountainous Tajikistan imports up to 60 percent of its food supplies, and is extremely vulnerable to changes in international food prices.
Kyrgyzstan is not quite as dependent on food imports – importing approximately 30 percent of its needs – but is still susceptible to high prices.