FAO-tracked world cereal prices hit 19-month high on fuel, fertiliser costs

Average satellite cereal prices roseate successful May to a 19-month precocious owed to outgo pressures successful substance and fertiliser linked to the Strait of Hormuz blockade.

In its monthly study tracking 5 cardinal commodities, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) warned of the risks to planetary nutrient prices from a imaginable simplification successful fertiliser use.

Around 40% of the world’s fertiliser proviso comes from the Middle East, wherever the large shipping way done the Strait of Hormuz has been blocked since the US-Israel struggle with Iran began successful precocious February.

While the wide FAO nutrient scale tracking the prices of cereals, meat, dairy, oils and sweetener dipped 0.2% successful May from a period earlier, it was 2.9% higher than successful May 2025. At 130.8 past month, the speechmaking was the highest since the 131.4 mean reached successful January 2023.

Meanwhile, the sub-gauge for cereals climbed 2.6% month-on-month and was up 5% from a twelvemonth earlier “reflecting higher prices crossed each large cereals amid higher substance and fertiliser costs globally and weather-related pressures”, the FAO said.

The cereals scale averaged 114.3 past month, a level not seen since the 114.4 effect successful October 2024, the FAO’s humanities records show.

Boubaker Ben-Belhassen, the manager of the FAO’s Markets and Trade division, said contiguous (5 June): “While planetary nutrient commodity markets person remained broadly resilient, rising cereal prices underscore vulnerability to weather-related risks and disruptions successful vigor and input markets.

“Continued uncertainty affecting cardinal commercialized routes, including the Strait of Hormuz, could trim fertiliser usage and spot further unit connected nutrient prices, highlighting the request for coordinated planetary action.”

Within the components of the cereals index, planetary wheat prices roseate 3.4% connected period successful May and were up 7.8% from the aforesaid period past year.

Maize prices accrued 1.9% and 3.9%, respectively.

The FAO’s All-Rice Price Index climbed 2.7% from April arsenic “weather concerns and higher crude lipid and derived merchandise prices underpinned quotations successful immoderate starring Asian exporting countries”, the UN assemblage said.

For meat, that scale edged up 0.1% to 130.5, its highest level successful the FAO’s readings going backmost to 1990.

“World bovine nutrient prices roseate connected the backmost of robust import demand, peculiarly from China and the United States of America, portion pig nutrient prices declined, chiefly owed to little prices successful the European Union amid abundant supplies and subdued import demand,” the FAO said.

The dairy scale dipped 0.5% month-on-month led by food prices.

Sugar prices roseate 7.5% from a period earlier, an summation the FAO said was owed to “concerns that El Niño conditions could adversely impact accumulation successful India and Thailand successful the twelvemonth ahead”.