Data

In January 2018, the FAO Food Price Index rose by 1.8 percent from its end-of-the-year levels. This increase was driven mainly by a sharp rise in dairy prices, as well as slighter increases in vegetable oil and sugar prices. The Index remained 2.2 percent below January 2017 levels, however.

Over the past century, enormous progress has been made in improving human welfare worldwide, thanks to quantum leaps in technology, rapid urbanization, and innovations in production systems. Yet immense challenges remain. Billions of people still face pervasive poverty, gross inequalities, joblessness, disease, and deprivation. In addition, the impacts of this progress on the environment, specifically those of climate change, are already being felt and will continue to intensify.

The world’s agricultural monitoring systems provide up-to-date information on food production to decision makers that is crucial to global and national food security. When prices become dangerously volatile—as they did during the food price crisis of 2007-2011—these systems spread critical information quickly that can reduce the risks of market and supply upheavals.

This year’s International Day of Rural Women (Oct. 15) focuses on the theme, “Challenges and opportunities in climate-resilient agriculture for gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls.” The urgency of these challenges is outlined in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report , which projects more severe repercussions of climate change —among them droughts, rising sea levels, and more frequent and powerful storms and floods—hitting sooner than anticipated.

As the world strives to feed a growing population in the face of declining natural resources and ongoing food security crises, commitment from policymakers to a sustainable food future is more important than ever. Argentina’s G20 Presidency has set sustainability and food security as a top priority for this year’s upcoming Ministerial Meeting, and these priorities were also focus of the recent T20 (Think 20) Summit, held in Buenos Aires in September 2018.