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Rising food and energy prices pose significant challenges for poorer countries and consumers, who spend large shares of their incomes on these basic necessities, warns a new UN report. According to the “Food Outlook”, a report published twice a year by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global food trade has not only continued to expand in value and volume, but growth has even accelerated, says the report released on November 11th. The FAO experts forecast that the world food import bill will reach a record high in 2021, surpassing USD 1.75 trillion. This would represent a 14% increase from 2020 and is 12% higher than the estimates presented in the last Food Outlook released in June. The increase is mainly driven by higher price levels of internationally traded food commodities and a threefold increase in freight costs. On November 4th, FAO had already sounded the alarm that world food prices surged to a new peak, reaching their highest level since July 2011. The Food Price Index which measures monthly changes in international prices of a basket of food commodities (cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar), averaged 133.2 points in October 2021, up 3% from September. The prices rose for a third consecutive month, primarily led by continued strength in the world prices of vegetable oils and cereals. [+] more ...