The aim of this short paper is to contribute to improving understanding of what soaring food prices at the global level mean for poor rural people across the developing world. Such an understanding serves as a basis both for strengthening IFAD’s capacity to engage in an informed international policy dialogue, and for identifying actions that it can take, in collaboration with its member governments, at national and local levels.

This study evaluates the potential impact of the recent rise in world food prices on the Moroccan economy and possible policy options to respond to it. The study focuses mainly on the poverty effects of such an external shock and the possible policy responses to it. A new social accounting matrix (SAM) and a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model have been developed for this study based on micro-level data in combination with sectoral and economywide data. The CGE model simulations show that more...

This paper examines the factors behind the rapid increase in internationally traded food prices since 2002 and estimates the contribution of various factors such as the increased production of biofuels from food grains and oilseeds, the weak dollar, and the increase in food production costs due to higher energy prices. It concludes that the most important factor was the large increase in biofuels production in the U.S. and the EU.

The number of hungry people increased by about 50 million in 2007 as a result of high food prices.High prices of agricultural inputs are a major obstacle for developing countries to increase agricultural production. From January 2007 to April 2008, fertilizer prices in particular shot up at a much faster rate than food prices.

Whenever Bellatu Bakane goes to her local market in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, she can't help but feel frustrated.

Many Ethiopians are skipping meals and cutting out "luxuries" like vegetables and eggs as the combination of drought and rising food prices squeezes already tight budgets. But for Bakane that's particularly dangerous; two-years ago she tested positive for HIV and began taking life-prolonging antiretrovirals.