Headline, February 22 2022/ PRICES : ''' '' POOREST -WORLD'S- PONDERS '' '''

PRICES : ''' '' POOREST -

WORLD'S- PONDERS '' '''

THERE'S A LOT OF CAUSE FOR WORRY about social unrest on a widespread scale. Drought and bad weather in major food-producing countries like Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Russia and Ukraine have made things worse.

The I.M.F.'s data shows that average food inflation across the world reached 6.85 percent on an annualized basis in December, the highest level since their series started in 2014.

Between April 2020 and December 2021, the price of soybeans soared 52 percent, and the prices of corn and wheat increased 80 percent, the fund's data showed, while the price of coffee rose 70 percent, largely because of droughts and frost in Brazil.

RISING FOOD PRICES ENDANGER the world's very poorest. Parts of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are particularly threatened.

Food prices have skyrocketed globally because of disruptions in global supply chain, adverse weather and rising energy prices, increases that have imposed a heavy burden on poorer people around the world and threaten to stoke social unrest.

The increases have affected items as varied as grains, vegetable oils, butter, pasta, beef and coffee. Farmers around the globe face challenges including droughts and ice storms that have ruined crops, rising prices for fertilizer and fuel and pandemic-related labor shortages and supply-chain disruptions that have made it difficult to deliver products to market.

A global index released last week by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization showed food prices last month rose to their highest levels since 2011, when skyrocketing costs contributed to political uprisings in Egypt and Libya.

The prices of meat, dairy and cereals trended upward from December last year, while the price of oils reached the highest level since the index's tracking began in 1990.

Maurice Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who was formerly chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said that food price increases would strain incomes in poorer countries, especially in some parts of Latin America and Africa, where some people may spend up to 50 or 60 percent of their incomes on food.

He said that it '' wasn't much of an exaggeration '' to say the world was approaching a global food crisis and that slower growth, high unemployment and stressed budgets from governments that have spent heavily to combat the pandemic had created '' a perfect storm of adverse circumstances. ''

''There's a lot of cause for worry about social unrest on a widespread scale,'' Mr. Obstfeld added.

Even before the pandemic, global food prices had been trending upward after disease wiped out much of China's pig herd and the US-China trade war resulted in imposition of Chinese tariffs on American agricultural goods.

BUT when the pandemic began in early 2020, it brought seismic shifts in food demand. Restaurants, cafeterias and slaughterhouses closed, and more people switched to cooking and eating at home. Some American farmers who could not deliver their products to consumers dumped milk in their fields and culled their herds.

TWO years later, global demand for food remains strong, but higher fuel prices and shipping costs, along with other supply-chain bottlenecks, like shortages of truck drivers and shipping containers, continue to push up prices, said Christian Bogmans, an economist at the International Monetary Fund.

The Honour with Caring of the Latest Global Operational Research on Rising Food Prices, and Growing Poverty, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Ana Swanson.

With most respectful and caring dedication to the world's poorest, and then leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

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