Rising food prices and food aid

We do know that world food prices have increased in recent years, with the exception of the recent worldwide economic downturn. This is problematic because commodity prices are tied to the amount of humanitarian food aid that can be given to poor countries. One study reported that there is an inverse relationship between food aid shipments from the United States and commodity prices. This means that they move in opposite directions, so when commodity prices go up, the amount of food aid shipments go down.

A recent article in the Economist reported that the world’s poor are the people who are most impacted by the rising price of food. This same article argues that governments need to liberalize their economies even further because the subsidization agriculture, and the biofuel industry, has in part caused the increased food prices.

The World Food Programme has reported that if they want to distribute the same amount of food as last year, they are going to need 700 million more dollars.