{"id":1709,"date":"2011-04-12T08:19:18","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T12:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=1709"},"modified":"2011-04-12T08:21:51","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T12:21:51","slug":"food-prices-decrease-for-the-first-time-in-eight-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/1709","title":{"rendered":"Food Prices Decrease for the First Time in Eight Months"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are some much-needed\u00a0<a title=\"Global Food Prices Decline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fao.org\/news\/story\/en\/item\/55058\/icode\/\" target=\"_blank\">good news<\/a> on the food price front. From the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;The FAO food price index has dropped for the first time after eight months of continuous price spikes, FAO announced today.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The\u00a0index averaged\u00a0230 points in March\u00a02011, down\u00a02.9 percent from its peak in February, but still 37 percent above March of last year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This decline in food prices is due primarily to a decline in the prices of sugar (down 10 percent in March relative to February), oils (down 7 percent), and sugar (down 2.6 percent), which are three of the five components of the FAO&#8217;s food price index, the others being meat (unchanged) and dairy (up 1.9 percent).<\/p>\n<p>That the price of cereals decreased is cause for celebration. Indeed, when I discuss how food prices may well cause political unrest, what I really refer to is the price of cereals, which constitute the bulk of poor people&#8217;s diets the world over. It is only when people get wealthier that they substitute away from cereals toward meat.<\/p>\n<p>But when people are wealthier, they are also more likely to demand better governance (or they are more likely to be wealthier as a result of better governance, causality likely runs both ways), so that food prices matter less in fostering political unrest when people are wealthier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are some much-needed\u00a0good news on the food price front. From the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,12,44],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-1709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-policy","category-politics","tag-food-prices","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-rz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1709"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1715,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions\/1715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}