According to a report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on the 6th, global food prices fell slightly in April after hitting new highs in February and March, but remained high.

According to the report, in April, the FAO food price index was 158.5 points, down 0.8% from the previous month, but up 29.8% from the same period last year. Among them, the vegetable oil price index corrected, leading the decline in the food price index, the grain price index decreased slightly, and the dairy product, meat and sugar price index increased slightly.

A woman buys groceries at a supermarket in Vancouver, Canada, on April 20. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Liang Sen)
In April, the vegetable oil price index fell 5.7% from its record high set in March, but was still well above its level a year earlier. A further decline in international vegetable oil prices has been contained due to uncertainty over exports from Indonesia, the world's leading palm oil exporter, the FAO said.

Indonesia has suspended the export of palm oil products since April 28, in order to ease the pressure on domestic edible oil supply.

Published monthly, the FAO Food Price Index measures changes in international prices for the most actively traded food commodities. The index is composed of a weighted average of the price indices of five commodity categories: cereals, vegetable oils, dairy products, meat and sugar.

This is a scene of a wheat harvest taken in Amritsar, Punjab state, India, on April 19, 2022. Xinhua News Agency
Joseph Schmidhuber, deputy director of the FAO Markets and Trade Division, said in Geneva, Switzerland on the 6th that about 25 million tons of exportable Ukrainian grains could not be shipped due to infrastructure and port blockades. In addition, the full granary may lead to the difficulty of grain storage in the harvest season in July and August.

Ukraine was the world's fourth-largest corn exporter and sixth-largest wheat exporter in the previous year, according to the International Grains Council. According to FAO data, Ukraine is also the world's largest exporter of sunflower oil.

Data released this week by industry information analysis agency APK-Inform showed Ukraine exported 923,000 tonnes of grains in April, compared with 2.8 million tonnes a year earlier. Ukraine increased grain exports via other routes in April after Black Sea ports were blocked, and exports are expected to increase further in May, said Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotsky.