A Note on Rising Food Prices

Mitchell, Donald

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGRICULTURAL EXPORTS;    AGRICULTURAL MARKETS;    AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS;    AGRICULTURE;    ANIMAL FATS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4682
RP-ID  :  WPS4682

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The rapid rise in food prices has been aburden on the poor in developing countries, who spendroughly half of their household incomes on food. This paperexamines the factors behind the rapid increase ininternationally traded food prices since 2002 and estimatesthe contribution of various factors such as the increasedproduction of biofuels from food grains and oilseeds, theweak dollar, and the increase in food production costs dueto higher energy prices. It concludes that the mostimportant factor was the large increase in biofuelsproduction in the U.S. and the EU. Without these increases,global wheat and maize stocks would not have declinedappreciably, oilseed prices would not have tripled, andprice increases due to other factors, such as droughts,would have been more moderate. Recent export bans andspeculative activities would probably not have occurredbecause they were largely responses to rising prices. Whileit is difficult to compare the results of this study withthose of other studies due to differences in methodologies,time periods and prices considered, many other studies havealso recognized biofuels production as a major driver offood prices. The contribution of biofuels to the rise infood prices raises an important policy issue, since much ofthe increase was due to EU and U.S. government policies thatprovided incentives to biofuels production, and biofuelspolicies which subsidize production need to be reconsideredin light of their impact on food prices.