food price volatility

Help Yourself! provides the second year results of a four-year study on how food price volatility affects everyday life and uncovers grassroots realities related to the right to food.

Before the opening of the Committee on Food Security’s annual meeting in Rome (7 October), Oxfam called for Governments to ensure that biofuel policies do not force poor farmers off their land and fuel food price spikes.

Little will be done to curb harmful food speculation today as EU finance ministers meet to approve their position on the new Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) – which sets new regulations for financial markets. According to a broad coalition of environmental and development organizations, loopholes in the legislation will render it ineffective to prevent food speculation, and the resulting food price spikes that hit the poorest the hardest.

Half a decade after the price spike of 2007-2008, food price volatility has become the new norm: people have come to expect food prices to rapidly rise and fall, though nobody know

Onus of incorporating strong rules to limit speculation on food commodities into Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) now lies with Member States

Joint NGO media reaction by Oxfam; Friends of the Earth Europe; World Economy, Ecology and Development (WEED); World Development Movement

In response to Glencore director saying the US drought was good for business:

Oxfam’s food policy adviser Thierry Kesteloot said:

The Sahel Working Group, a consortium of International NGOs, today launched a report evaluating the responses to the 2005 and 2010 food crises, concluding that the Sahel is “in a state of permanent crisis” requiring smarter and earlier investment in the region.

This report by the Sahel Working Group discusses the chronic food and nutrition crisis across countries in the Sahel.