March 2024 Global Price Watch
- In West Africa, staple food prices showed mixed trends in February. In the Sahel region, prices were stable or declined due to seasonal harvests but remained high due to supply constraints and high demand. Nigeria registered a record annual inflation rate driven by currency depreciation and the lasting effects of reduced fuel subsidies. Looking ahead, prices across the region are expected to rise in March and beyond as household stocks dwindle, demand for Ramadan increases, and transportation costs remain elevated.
- In East Africa, staple food prices declined in most markets in February due to increased seasonal supplies. In Sudan, however, conflict and currency depreciation drove up marketing costs and increased prices for coarse grains. Regional livestock prices were mixed due to varying water and feed availability. Staple prices are expected to increase across the region due to the impacts of currency depreciation and elevated marketing costs. Livestock prices are expected to remain high, driven by increased demand for Ramadan.
- In Southern Africa, staple grain prices increased in several major markets due to seasonal stock declines and high production costs. Zambia and Zimbabwe faced tight supplies and currency weakness, leading to maize price increases. Malawi and DRC, however, saw seasonal price drops for maize due to green harvest supply. Due to the anticipated impacts of the ongoing strong El Niño on maize harvests, seasonal price declines are expected to be muted. Due to higher import and energy costs, inflation will likely accelerate in the coming months.
- In Central America, white maize prices were stable in February. Red bean prices declined for the second consecutive month supported by delayed postrera 2023 harvest and small volumes from the ongoing main season (apante). Black beans prices were stable as staggered and delayed postrera tardia harvest did not compensate for previous local production declines. In Haiti, violence intensified severely disrupting market operations and pressing prices upwards. In Venezuela, monthly inflation continued to ease and the VED marginally appreciated, supporting food price stability in local currency.
- In Central Asia, the export prices of milling wheat in Kazakhstan were stable due to ample supply and declining global prices. The prices of both high -and low-quality rice, and wheat flour remained stable in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Yemen, prices were stable in SBA-areas and mixed in IRG-areas where wheat flour prices were up six percent.
- International staple food markets were sufficiently supplied. Global staple food prices remained relatively stable, despite external disruptions such as shipping delays and farmer protests in Europe. Export prices for wheat, maize, and soybeans continued to decrease, reaching their lowest point in the past two years. Although rice prices softened to reduced trade activity during the Lunar New Year holidays, they remained about a third higher than a year ago.
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15‘Children were dying. We didn’t even have aspirin’: the Indigenous Venezuelans forced far from home
Economic crisis has driven Warao communities from their traditional life in lush forest to a Brazilian slum
- Photographs by Nicola Zolin
At 4pm, the sound of sirens is fading. On the pavement, a teenage girl – her eyes darting back and forth to monitor police presence – starts smoking crack. She is across the street from “Hotel 583”, a makeshift shelter in a dangerous part of downtown Manaus, the capital of Amazonas in Brazil.
On the second floor of the building, in the Cidade de Deus slum, 20 of the 27 Warao people who live here cram into a sweltering room measuring about 20 sq metres. Some sleep on the floor, while the more fortunate are in hammocks. The children’s stomachs are swollen, the effect of parasites, and their skin is covered in rashes.
Warao people are crowded into a makeshift building in the Cidade de Deus slum
Continue reading...Drought persists in much of southern Africa while heavy rainfall drives flooding in parts of East Africa
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16Fresh blow for Rwanda deportation plan as report shows extreme poverty and hunger
Foreign Office paper says not enough being done, with over half the population living on less than $1.90 a day
New fears have arisen about the suitability of Rwanda as a destination to send UK asylum seekers after a damning government assessment about the prevalence of poverty and malnutrition in the country.
The paper, from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), highlights key concerns about the state of Rwanda in a “problem statement”. More than half of the population – 56.5% – live on less than $1.90 a day and FCDO’s analysis finds that poverty reduction has “stagnated” since 2014.
Continue reading...Many parts of Southern Africa are in drought, while flooding persists in parts of Eastern Africa
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16Vegetables sell for 50 times usual price as Gazans scramble for food
Reports of exorbitant cost of basic foods such as onions, as well as oil and flour, come amid warnings Gaza faces imminent famine
People living in Gaza are facing exorbitant food prices as more than 1 million residents of the Palestinian territory face famine.
Since Israel’s invasion in October, it has become common for Gaza’s displaced population to share pictures of their shopping baskets and document how high prices have risen amid food shortages.
Continue reading...Fish fed to farmed salmon should be part of our diet, too, study suggests
Scientists found that farmed salmon production leads to an overall loss of essential dietary nutrients. They say that eating more wild ‘feed’ species directly could benefit our health while reducing aquaculture demand for finite marine resources.
Researchers analysed the flow of nutrients from the edible species of wild fish used as feed, to the farmed salmon they were fed to. They found a decrease in six out of nine nutrients in the salmon fillet – calcium, iodine, iron, omega-3, vitamin B12 and vitamin A, but increased levels of selenium and zinc.
Most wild ‘feed’ fish met dietary nutrient recommendations at smaller portion sizes than farmed Atlantic salmon, including omega-3 fatty acids which are known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke.
“What we’re seeing is that most species of wild fish used as feed have a similar or greater density and range of micronutrients than farmed salmon fillets,” said lead author, Dr David Willer, Zoology Department, University of Cambridge.
“Whilst still enjoying eating salmon and supporting sustainable growth in the sector, people should consider eating a greater and wider variety of wild fish species like sardines, mackerel and anchovies, to get more essential nutrients straight to their plate.”
In the UK, 71% of adults have insufficient vitamin D in winter, and teenage girls and women often have deficiencies of iodine, selenium and iron. Yet while, 24% of adults ate salmon weekly, only 5.4% ate mackerel, 1% anchovies and just 0.4% herring.
“Making a few small changes to our diet around the type of fish that we eat can go a long way to changing some of these deficiencies and increasing the health of both our population and planet,” said Willer.
The researchers found consuming one-third of current food-grade wild feed fish directly would be the most efficient way of maximising nutrients from the sea.
“Marine fisheries are important local and global food systems, but large catches are being diverted towards farm feeds. Prioritising nutritious seafood for people can help improve both diets and ocean sustainability,” said senior author Dr James Robinson, Lancaster University.
This approach could help address global nutrient deficiencies say the team of scientists from the University of Cambridge, Lancaster University, University of Stirling and the University of Aberdeen.
The study was published today in the journal, Nature Food.
The scientists calculated the balance of nutrients in edible portions of whole wild fish, used within pelleted salmon feed in Norway, compared to the farmed salmon fillets.
They focused on nine nutrients that are essential in human diets and concentrated in seafood – iodine, calcium, iron, vitamin B12, vitamin A, omega-3 (EPA + DHA), vitamin D, zinc and selenium.
The wild fish studied included Pacific and Peruvian anchoveta, and Atlantic herring, mackerel, sprat and blue whiting – which are all marketed and consumed as seafood.
They found that these six feed species contained a greater, or similar, concentration of nutrients as the farmed salmon fillets. Quantities of calcium were over five times higher in wild feed fish fillets than salmon fillets, iodine was four times higher, and iron, omega-3, vitamin B12, and vitamin A were over 1.5 times higher.
Wild feed species and salmon had comparable quantities of vitamin D.
Zinc and selenium were found to be higher in salmon than the wild feed species – the researchers say these extra quantities are due to other salmon feed ingredients and are a real mark of progress in the salmon sector.
“Farmed salmon is an excellent source of nutrition, and is one of the best converters of feed of any farmed animal, but for the industry to grow it needs to become better at retaining key nutrients that it is fed. This can be done through more strategic use of feed ingredients, including from fishery by-products and sustainably-sourced, industrial-grade fish such as sand eels”, said Dr Richard Newton of the Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, whose team also included Professor Dave Little, Dr Wesley Malcorps and Björn Kok.
“It was interesting to see that we’re effectively wasting around 80% of the calcium and iodine from the feed fish – especially when we consider that women and teenage girls are often not getting enough of these nutrients”.
Willer said “These numbers have been underacknowledged by the aquaculture industry’s standard model of quoting Fish In Fish Out (FIFO) ratios rather than looking at nutrients.
The researchers would like to see a nutrient retention metric adopted by the fishing and aquaculture industries. They believe that if combined with the current FIFO ratio, the industry could become more efficient, and reduce the burden on fish stocks that also provide seafood. The team are building a standardised and robust vehicle for integrating the nutrient retention metric into industry practice.
“We’d like to see the industry expand but not at a cost to our oceans,” said Willer.
“We’d also like to see a greater variety of affordable, convenient and appealing products made of wild ‘feed’ fish and fish and salmon by-products for direct human consumption.”
The research was funded by the Scottish Government’s Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS), a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship a Henslow Fellowship at Murray Edwards College and the University of Cambridge.
Reference: D. Willer et al. Wild fish consumption can balance nutrient retention in farmed fish Nature Food DOI: 10.1038/s43016-024-00932-z
The public are being encouraged to eat more wild fish, such as mackerel, anchovies and herring, which are often used within farmed salmon feeds. These oily fish contain essential nutrients including calcium, B12 and omega-3 but some are lost from our diets when we just eat the salmon fillet.
Making a few small changes to our diet around the type of fish that we eat can go a long way to changing some of these deficiencies and increasing the health of both our population and planet Dr David Willer, Zoology DepartmentJoff Lee / The Image Bank / Getty Mackerel with potato salad
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Fish fed to farmed salmon should be part of our diet, too, study suggests
Scientists found that farmed salmon production leads to an overall loss of essential dietary nutrients. They say that eating more wild ‘feed’ species directly could benefit our health while reducing aquaculture demand for finite marine resources.
Researchers analysed the flow of nutrients from the edible species of wild fish used as feed, to the farmed salmon they were fed to. They found a decrease in six out of nine nutrients in the salmon fillet – calcium, iodine, iron, omega-3, vitamin B12 and vitamin A, but increased levels of selenium and zinc.
Most wild ‘feed’ fish met dietary nutrient recommendations at smaller portion sizes than farmed Atlantic salmon, including omega-3 fatty acids which are known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke.
“What we’re seeing is that most species of wild fish used as feed have a similar or greater density and range of micronutrients than farmed salmon fillets,” said lead author, Dr David Willer, Zoology Department, University of Cambridge.
“Whilst still enjoying eating salmon and supporting sustainable growth in the sector, people should consider eating a greater and wider variety of wild fish species like sardines, mackerel and anchovies, to get more essential nutrients straight to their plate.”
In the UK, 71% of adults have insufficient vitamin D in winter, and teenage girls and women often have deficiencies of iodine, selenium and iron. Yet while, 24% of adults ate salmon weekly, only 5.4% ate mackerel, 1% anchovies and just 0.4% herring.
“Making a few small changes to our diet around the type of fish that we eat can go a long way to changing some of these deficiencies and increasing the health of both our population and planet,” said Willer.
The researchers found consuming one-third of current food-grade wild feed fish directly would be the most efficient way of maximising nutrients from the sea.
“Marine fisheries are important local and global food systems, but large catches are being diverted towards farm feeds. Prioritising nutritious seafood for people can help improve both diets and ocean sustainability,” said senior author Dr James Robinson, Lancaster University.
This approach could help address global nutrient deficiencies say the team of scientists from the University of Cambridge, Lancaster University, University of Stirling and the University of Aberdeen.
The study was published today in the journal, Nature Food.
The scientists calculated the balance of nutrients in edible portions of whole wild fish, used within pelleted salmon feed in Norway, compared to the farmed salmon fillets.
They focused on nine nutrients that are essential in human diets and concentrated in seafood – iodine, calcium, iron, vitamin B12, vitamin A, omega-3 (EPA + DHA), vitamin D, zinc and selenium.
The wild fish studied included Pacific and Peruvian anchoveta, and Atlantic herring, mackerel, sprat and blue whiting – which are all marketed and consumed as seafood.
They found that these six feed species contained a greater, or similar, concentration of nutrients as the farmed salmon fillets. Quantities of calcium were over five times higher in wild feed fish fillets than salmon fillets, iodine was four times higher, and iron, omega-3, vitamin B12, and vitamin A were over 1.5 times higher.
Wild feed species and salmon had comparable quantities of vitamin D.
Zinc and selenium were found to be higher in salmon than the wild feed species – the researchers say these extra quantities are due to other salmon feed ingredients and are a real mark of progress in the salmon sector.
“Farmed salmon is an excellent source of nutrition, and is one of the best converters of feed of any farmed animal, but for the industry to grow it needs to become better at retaining key nutrients that it is fed. This can be done through more strategic use of feed ingredients, including from fishery by-products and sustainably-sourced, industrial-grade fish such as sand eels”, said Dr Richard Newton of the Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, whose team also included Professor Dave Little, Dr Wesley Malcorps and Björn Kok.
“It was interesting to see that we’re effectively wasting around 80% of the calcium and iodine from the feed fish – especially when we consider that women and teenage girls are often not getting enough of these nutrients”.
Willer said “These numbers have been underacknowledged by the aquaculture industry’s standard model of quoting Fish In Fish Out (FIFO) ratios rather than looking at nutrients.
The researchers would like to see a nutrient retention metric adopted by the fishing and aquaculture industries. They believe that if combined with the current FIFO ratio, the industry could become more efficient, and reduce the burden on fish stocks that also provide seafood. The team are building a standardised and robust vehicle for integrating the nutrient retention metric into industry practice.
“We’d like to see the industry expand but not at a cost to our oceans,” said Willer.
“We’d also like to see a greater variety of affordable, convenient and appealing products made of wild ‘feed’ fish and fish and salmon by-products for direct human consumption.”
The research was funded by the Scottish Government’s Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS), a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship a Henslow Fellowship at Murray Edwards College and the University of Cambridge.
Reference: D. Willer et al. Wild fish consumption can balance nutrient retention in farmed fish Nature Food DOI: 10.1038/s43016-024-00932-z
The public are being encouraged to eat more wild fish, such as mackerel, anchovies and herring, which are often used within farmed salmon feeds. These oily fish contain essential nutrients including calcium, B12 and omega-3 but some are lost from our diets when we just eat the salmon fillet.
Making a few small changes to our diet around the type of fish that we eat can go a long way to changing some of these deficiencies and increasing the health of both our population and planet Dr David Willer, Zoology DepartmentJoff Lee / The Image Bank / Getty Mackerel with potato salad
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Drought conditions ongoing in north of Southern Africa while heavy rainfall drives flooding in the east
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16Drought conditions expanding across parts of Southern Africa; flooding persists in Tanzania and Zambia
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16Farm to factories
Cambridge Zero collaborates with Cambridge Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) and the University of Cambridge Decarbonisation Network for two research events this month looking at industry decarbonisation and food security.
Farm to factories
Cambridge Zero collaborates with Cambridge Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) and the University of Cambridge Decarbonisation Network for two research events this month looking at industry decarbonisation and food security.
Seven times size of Manhattan: the African tree-planting project making a difference
Thousands of farmers have been persuaded by TREES scheme to replace barren monocultures with biodiverse forest gardens
In a world of monoculture cash crops, an innovative African project is persuading farmers to plant biodiverse forest gardens that feed the family, protect the soil and expand tree cover.
Could Trees for the Future (TREES) be a rare example of a mass reforestation campaign that actually works? The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) certainly thinks so and last month awarded it the status of World Restoration Flagship.
Continue reading...‘My dream is to buy a piece of land’: the ‘outsiders’ farming at the Amazon’s last frontiers
Struggling to compete with large-scale landowners, smallholder farmers move ever deeper into Brazil’s disappearing forest
Onésio Nascimento has worked the land his whole life, moving from one Brazilian farming frontier to the next. During the coronavirus pandemic, he sold 20 hectares (50 acres) of land in northwest Mato Grosso state and used the money to buy another 100 hectares further north in the Amazon, in south Roraima.
Today, he grows cassava and bananas on his land, an hour’s drive down a bumpy dirt road, which turns to mud during the rainy season. Flanked by small herds of cattle, the road is used by loggers to extract valuable Amazon hardwoods from nearby pristine forest.
Continue reading...‘There aren’t seasons any more’: a childhood without water in north Colombia
The Wayúu people of La Guajira have always faced water scarcity. But now severe drought has brought disease and a shortage of food
Continue reading...Drought conditions spreading in areas of Southern Africa; flooding persists in Tanzania and Zambia
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16‘Fight waste to fight hunger’: food banks embrace imperfection to feed millions in Brazil
More than 40% of produce in the country is lost or wasted but new research highlights how it could be a key tool in fighting rising food insecurity. One charity is leading the charge
About half a dozen men in hairnets busy themselves with crates of fresh produce outside a food depot in Rio de Janeiro’s northern suburbs. As one reels off a list of products, the others place oddly shaped vegetables into large bags before loading them into a waiting car. The produce will later be cooked and served in soup kitchens, nurseries and other institutions offering free meals to people in need across the city.
The depot is run by Brazil’s biggest network of food banks, Sesc Mesa Brasil. With 95 units all over the country, Mesa – which means table in Portuguese – collects food that would otherwise go to waste from supermarkets, farmers and other suppliers and retailers, sorts it, and then donates it to partner organisations.
Continue reading...Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians, UN rights expert says
Exclusive: UN special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri says denial of food is war crime and constitutes ‘a situation of genocide’
Israel is intentionally starving Palestinians and should be held accountable for war crimes – and genocide, according to the UN’s leading expert on the right to food.
Hunger and severe malnutrition are widespread in the Gaza Strip, where about 2.2 million Palestinians are facing severe shortages resulting from Israel destroying food supplies and severely restricting the flow of food, medicines and other humanitarian supplies. Aid trucks and Palestinians waiting for humanitarian relief have come under Israeli fire.
Continue reading...English farmers to be offered ‘largest ever’ grant scheme amid food security concerns
Agricultural sector hit by post-Brexit turmoil with protests over trade deals, environmental legislation and rising costs
Rishi Sunak will promise farmers the “largest ever” grant scheme tomorrow, as well as the creation of a food security index, after criticism that Brexit trade deals and poor responses to flooding and rising costs have put England’s ability to feed itself at risk.
Against a backdrop of turmoil in the agricultural sector, with farmers in the UK and across the continent causing havoc with tractor protests against environmental regulations and a perceived lack of support, Sunak will respond to farmers’ calls for a commitment from government that the UK’s food self-sufficiency will remain at or exceed the current estimated level, which is about 60%.
Continue reading...Flooding from heavy rainfall persists in several African countries; abnormally dry conditions worsen in parts of Southern Africa
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