Food Prices Are Falling. Why Is There Still a Hunger Crisis?

Food Prices Are Falling. Why Is There Still a Hunger Crisis?

International and Arab News

As quickly as it blew up, the food crisis of 2022 appears to be receding.

Red spring wheat rose to nearly $13 a bushel in March, prompting the world’s biggest wheat importer, Egypt, to devalue its currency. It’s now trading around $8, a fall of more than a third. Indonesia halted exports of palm oil in April in the face of a similar price spike. Prices are now down more than 40% from the peak. Corn prices fell by nearly a quarter since the start of May. Sugar and arabica coffee beans have hit respective one-year and nine-month lows in the past few weeks.

It’s tempting to see this as a sign that the crisis that has pushed the world’s population of hungry people to its highest level since the mid-2000s is finally ending. Sadly, that’s unlikely to be the case.

That’s because, for all the attention they direct toward the problems of food insecurity, the pricing of agricultural commodities contracts on major exchanges is only one of many factors contributing to hunger in the world — and in many cases, it’s not even the most important.

Few of the world’s hungry, for instance, are paying for their food in US