Price volatility is at the center of the G20 on agriculture, which opened yesterday in Paris. According to the FAO, the prices of basic foodstuffs will remain high and unstable during 2012. A difficult situation both in America and in Asia, Europe and Africa, but particularly problematic in the poorest countries.
In 2011, the price of cereals increased by 71 percent. This year, international food imports will cost 21% more than last year. The heaviest bill will go to the countries most dependent on foreign countries, which will find themselves paying up to 30% more. Some African countries spend up to 20% of their GDP importing staple foods. But the problem also affects emerging countries such as India and Indonesia, where the demand for foodstuffs is constantly growing: a factor that contributes to the explosion in prices.
The food emergency, Coldiretti argues, certainly cannot be resolved with low prices at the origin for producers because these do not allow agriculture to survive: in particular, the closure of companies deconstructs the system. The trend of the quotations of agricultural products is, underlined Coldiretti, increasingly conditioned by capital movements that move easily from the financial markets to those of precious metals such as gold, up to raw materials such as wheat, corn and soybeans. Here they have caused unsustainable price volatility which puts crops and livestock at risk in many countries.
