The Market Slate on the homepage shows, each month, what the world pays for the main food commodities and what shoppers pay for food at home in India and the UK. Every figure comes from an official release, and the panel names the release and the date of the next one.
World prices: the FAO Food Price Index
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations publishes the FAO Food Price Index early each month. FAO describes it as a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities: the average of five commodity group price indices (cereals, vegetable oils, dairy, meat and sugar), weighted by each group’s average export share over 2014 to 2016. The base, 2014 to 2016, equals 100. FAO revises recent months when new data arrive, so a figure for the previous month can change.
Prices at home
For India we show year-on-year food inflation from the Consumer Food Price Index, published each month by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. For the United Kingdom we show the annual rate of the consumer prices index for food and non-alcoholic beverages, published each month by the Office for National Statistics. The two measures are built differently and are not directly comparable.
What the Slate does not show
It does not show live market prices, futures or share prices, and it is not a forecast. To see the source data, follow the links on the panel.