State of food insecurity in the world : how does international price volatility affect domestic economies and food security?

This edition of The State of Food Insecurity in the World focuses on food price volatility. Our organizations continue to monitor food prices, and have alerted the world through a number of analytical reports on food price trends and ongoing volatility in recent years, as these continue to be a matter of concern for governments and people around the world. Indeed, high and volatile food prices are widely expected to continue in the future. By using previously unavailable data sources and studies, this report digs underneath the globalscale analyses to find out what happened on domestic markets and to draw lessons from the world food crisis of 2006–08. In particular, the report emphasizes that the impact of world price changes on household food security and nutrition is highly context-specific. The impact depends on the commodity, the national policies that affect price transmission from world markets to domestic markets, the demographic and production characteristics of different households and a range of other factors. This diversity of impacts, both within and between countries, points to a need for improved data and analysis so that governments can implement better policies.