Food prices: where to get briefed
March 2, 2008 | by Alex Evans | More on Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development | No comments
[Last updated: May 30th]
Now that food prices are moving fast up the agenda, you might want to check out some of the wider briefing available on the web. Here are some sources worth a look:
- The hub site for the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis is here; see also their latest update (from 20th May). The task force is currently preparing a ‘Comprehensive Framework for Action’ in time for the UN’s food summit in June.
- The Food and Agriculture Organisation has set up a new portal on the world food situation. It’s got a news feed on news from countries and from FAO itself, plus good links to background briefing including the latest FAO Food Outlook reports, which come out every six months (here’s November 07’s - next one in June). See also the latest joint FAO / OECD report on the agricultural outlook to 2017: summary here.
- The World Bank has a pretty good selection of material, including a briefing paper for the Spring Meetings in April 2008, a chart showing which policies are in place in which countries, a slideshow on rising food prices and of course the latest World Development Report (2008’s is on agriculture and development). Also worth reading is World Bank President Bob Zoellick’s ten point plan for tackling the food crisis, published in the FT.
- The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (snappy title, no?) published its report through UNESCO on April 15th. Press release here, executive summary here and full report here.
- The Financial Times has been way out in front of the rest of the broadsheet media, as I’ve noted here before. They have a special portal page set up on the issue, including links to key articles as well as slideshows and videos. The New York Times has a similar page here. Reuters has a terrific hub site that includes a clickable map of all food-related instability around the world; and the BBC has a very useful set of graphs and stats.
- The International Food Policy Research Institute published a new World Food Situation report in December last year; more recently, they’ve also produced a ‘What, How and Who of proposed policy actions“. See also this briefing paper from the Overseas Development Institute.
Finally, a couple of plugs on stuff that I’m involved in:
- I’ve published a briefing paper (April 2008) on why prices are rising and what it means for development as part of a joint CIC / Chatham House project that I’m leading on international implications of rising food prices. Chatham House also has a major research project underway on UK food policy in the 21st century, and released a set of scenarios for UK food supply in May.
- And of course, we’ll keep tracking the issue closely here on Global Dashboard - we’ll file everything we do on this under the Food Prices section.
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- Rising Food Prices: Drivers and Implications for Development
- Dani Rodrik on food prices
- Back to food prices
- Ban Ki-moon on food prices
- The UN’s summit on world food security