ROME: Stock markets may be swooning, but food commodities are experiencing lower and more stable prices, and may hit a record year-on-year drop in 2015, the UN food agency said on Thursday.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation said that “agricultural commodities are going through a period of lower and less volatile prices”, as “most cereal and vegetable oil prices are on a trajectory that is both steady and declining”.

The downward trend, after dramatic upward price spikes from 2007 through early 2011, has been helped by high inventory levels, sharply lower oil prices and the renewed strength of the US dollar, it said.

The FAO’s food price index hit a six-year low in August, and figures released Thursday showed it nudged up to 165.3 points.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2015

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