COVID-19 and food inflation scares

Vos, Rob; Glauber, Joseph W.; Hernandez, Manuel A.; and Laborde Debucquet, David. 2022. COVID-19 and food inflation scares. In COVID-19 and global food security: Two years later, eds. John McDermott and Johan Swinnen. Part Two: Agricultural Production and Value Chains, Chapter 10, Pp. 64-72. https://doi.org/10.2499/9780896294226_10.

Rising food prices during 2021 caused concern worldwide. In January, international prices for major food items climbed to a level near the heights of the global food price crises of 2007–2008 and 2010–2011, according to the FAO Food Price Index. International prices declined in the first months of the pandemic, following the initial lockdown measures that were imposed to contain the pandemic, but by October 2021, prices in international markets had risen by about 30 percent over March 2020 levels. In many countries, consumer prices for food also surged, generating fear that this could lead to rising food insecurity (see, for example, Gerard 2021).