What's New

The latest FAO Food Price Index was released this week, rising slightly from February but well below levels in March 2015. Sugar prices and vegetable oil prices rose sharply in March, but this change was offset by declines in dairy prices.

Last year witnessed the culmination of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the launch of a new global development agenda – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to IFPRI’s 2016 Global Food Policy Report (GFPR) , launched in Washington, DC last week, achieving the ambitious aims of the SDGs – which include eliminating extreme poverty, hunger, and malnutrition while encouraging sustainable growth and conserving the environment by 2030 – will require coordinated action at the global, regional, national, and local community levels.

A country’s food security conditions clearly have implications for the types of policies its leaders will try to enact and for the way that country interacts with international organizations and governing bodies. Much effort has been made to classify countries according to their food and nutrition security status in order to better guide policymaking, but determining such classifications is complicated.

March 22 is World Water Day, which focuses this year on the link between water and jobs. As the latest IFPRI blog points out, this link is particularly important for women in rural areas. The majority of women in developing countries engage in agricultural work, whether that is production of food for sale in the market or more production of food for their own households in kitchen gardens.

FEWS Net has released its latest Global Weather Hazards Summary for March 11-17, 2016. The report covers ongoing and recent weather conditions throughout the world; this latest report covers Africa, Central Asia, Central America and the Caribbean.