Global food prices jump as inflation rises

“It’s outrageous,” said Ms Matos, 41. “Sometimes I want to cry… I buy gas for cooking and then I can’t buy food, or if I buy food I don’t have money to buy soap.” She said that she Can’t even buy leftover bags of bones from the butcher shop.

Rising food prices are causing trouble in a part of the developing world from Peru to the Philippines. In October, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says, world food prices hit their highest level since 2011.

National governments and aid groups have warned that rising food prices is turning into greater hunger and malnutrition, especially for poor households already grappling with other economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Growth has been particularly sharp in Latin America, where widespread inflation has driven up the prices of most commodities and the United Nations estimates that tens of millions of people are malnourished or skipping meals.

In Asia, where countries have generally experienced low inflation, bad weather has affected crops, causing prices to rise in some places. Heavy rains in India in recent months have caused floods and landslides, destroying crops and pushing up the price of vegetables like cauliflower and onions.

“We manage by eating just rice, sometimes roti with sugar. Is there any other option?,” said Shanti Horo, a 41-year-old cook and single mother from New Delhi.

In China, heavy rains have hit even the top vegetable-growing provinces, deepening supply shortages that have arisen as the country recovers from the effects of the pandemic. The Philippines and some other Southeast Asian countries are also battling high prices of vegetables and palm oil.

Economists and policymakers warn that in Latin America, the damage from rising food prices could be deeper and more long-lasting.

Central banks in the region have aggressively raised interest rates in an effort to curb inflation. Brazil and Chile both recently announced their biggest interest rate hikes in two decades.

According to data from Our World in Data, it is a tough drug to swallow in a region that is facing the world’s deepest economic contraction from the pandemic as well as its highest per capita death rate from Covid-19.

“Inflation has been particularly problematic in Latin America, where it has risen much more rapidly than in other regions,” said William Jackson, chief emerging market economist at London-based research firm Capital Economics.

After registering modest growth in several years before the pandemic, Brazil and other parts of the region are now facing stagflation, a toxic combination of no growth and high prices, he said.

Inflation is operating above the target of central banks across the region – in the case of Brazil, three times the target. The country’s worst drought in nearly a century has also affected crops and dried up reservoirs that power hydroelectric dams, putting pressure on electricity prices.

Rising food and energy prices have also exacerbated inflation in Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile. According to a study by the Getulio Vargas Foundation, or FGV, beef and eggs in Brazil are 20% more expensive than last year, while the price of chicken and tomatoes has risen by almost 30%.

Nurse Juliette Irureta, 27, from Buenos Aires, said she can no longer give her 4-year-old son the balanced diet he needs. “We spent almost two years risking our lives on the front line, and now, on our salaries, it’s getting harder to eat,” she said.

Customers would ask butchers in the city for cheap cuts, such as chicken giblets, to feed their pets; Now they are taking care of their family by buying the same cut.

Maid Miguelina Espindola, 60, said she was struggling to find work because the man whose house she cleaned died of COVID-19. Even when she does, so much of her wages now go to food that she cannot afford the diabetes medicine she needs. “I always lose.”

In Paraisopolis, on the southwestern outskirts of So Paulo, Ms Matos has started waiting in line for hours every day at a local community center run by G10 Favelas, a non-profit organization that provides freebies in favela slum communities across Brazil. gives food.

Several weeks ago, the center had to close its gates before lunch after a tussle over running out of supplies.

The center relies on donations from supermarkets and the wealthy, but as Brazil’s COVID-19 death rate has declined, the offerings have begun to dry up.

“People don’t understand this. The situation for the poor is worse now than it was in the middle of the pandemic,” said G10 Favelas director Gilson Rodrigues.