Maize, wheat and rice crops have improved harvest prospect

NaijaAgroNet:

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has declared that staple food prices rose in the month of August even as grain prices fell and the outlook for global cereal production improved on maize, wheat and rice, NaijaAgroNet reports.

The FAO Food Price Index, released at the weekend, NaijaAgroNet reports, averaged 165.6 points in August, up 1.9 per cent from July and almost 7 per cent from a year earlier. The monthly jump was mostly driven by cheese and palm oil quotations, while those for wheat, maize and rice all fell.

FAO raised considerably its world cereal production forecast for 2016 to 2 566 million tonnes, up 22 million tonnes from July projections. FAO's Cereal Supply and Demand Brief, also released today, attributed the increase primarily to anticipation of a record global wheat harvest this year and a large upward revision to this year's maize crop in the United States of America.

The expected increase in grain output is forecast to boost inventories and push up the global stock-to-use ratio to 25.3 percent, an "even more comfortable (supply and demand) situation than predicted at the start of the season," FAO said.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE 

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