Grain prices slide back, but uncertainties loom
Friday, 17 October 2008
NEW YORK, Oct 16 (AP): World grain prices have been tumbling back down the steep slope they climbed early this year, but from Manila's food stalls to London's supermarkets, everyday consumers aren't seeing it yet. The experts worry, meanwhile, that the wild swings may turn uphill again.
The global financial crisis "puts us in a precarious position," says U.N. food economist Abdolreza Abbassian, who fears farmers frustrated by falling prices and credit shortages will plant less.
Canadian Rolf Penner is one discouraged wheat grower.
"We literally went to the moon and back," the Manitoba farmer said of the seesaw in prices. "To watch them crash down as they have is not a great feeling."
That lunar leap, from 2006 to early 2008, more than doubled on average the world prices of grains - the rice, wheat, corn and other cereals that are prime ingredients of so much that we eat, directly or indirectly, through livestock feed, for example.
A worldful of factors pushed prices up, among them the growing appetite for meat in China and other fast-developing countries; the skyrocketing cost of fertilizer, fuel and other petroleum-based farm "inputs," and a jump in demand for U.S. corn to make the alternative fuel ethanol.
That jolt to the global grain market was an earthquake in many poorer countries, where hundreds of millions spend most of what they have on food, and where prices rose anywhere from 50 per cent to 300 per cent on some items.
The global financial crisis "puts us in a precarious position," says U.N. food economist Abdolreza Abbassian, who fears farmers frustrated by falling prices and credit shortages will plant less.
Canadian Rolf Penner is one discouraged wheat grower.
"We literally went to the moon and back," the Manitoba farmer said of the seesaw in prices. "To watch them crash down as they have is not a great feeling."
That lunar leap, from 2006 to early 2008, more than doubled on average the world prices of grains - the rice, wheat, corn and other cereals that are prime ingredients of so much that we eat, directly or indirectly, through livestock feed, for example.
A worldful of factors pushed prices up, among them the growing appetite for meat in China and other fast-developing countries; the skyrocketing cost of fertilizer, fuel and other petroleum-based farm "inputs," and a jump in demand for U.S. corn to make the alternative fuel ethanol.
That jolt to the global grain market was an earthquake in many poorer countries, where hundreds of millions spend most of what they have on food, and where prices rose anywhere from 50 per cent to 300 per cent on some items.