FAO’s new Food Outlook report tracks main food and beverage markets and looks at olive oil and fertilisers
The global food import bill is expected to increase by 2.2 per cent from the previous year to more than $2 trillion in 2024, pushed up by higher prices for cocoa, coffee and tea and also buoyed by higher import costs for fruits and vegetables, according to Food Outlook, a report the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Import expenditures on cocoa, coffee and tea are anticipated to increase by 22.9 per cent. accounting for more than half of the overall increase in value terms. That reflects soaring international prices for these commodities due mostly to weather conditions and logistics issues. Cocoa prices reached almost four times their ten-year average earlier this year, those for coffee nearly doubled, and those for tea rose 15 per cent above their usual long-term levels.
Exports of these commodities play an important role in the economy of numerous countries, FAO economists noted. Coffee export earnings in Burundi and Ethiopia typically cover nearly 40 per cent of their respective food import bills, tea does the same for more than half of Sri Lanka’s bill, and Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa exports more than offset all of the country’s food import costs.
Meanwhile, declining import bills for cereals and oilseeds offer relief to lower-income countries. High-income countries account for two-thirds of the global food import bill and will face a 4.4 per cent increase in 2024, while the bills for upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income and low-income countries are likely to contract.