El Nino is expected to continue for several months, with a 73% chance it will retreat between April and June, the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said on Thursday. El Nino is a weather pattern associated with a disruption of wind patterns that means warmer ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific. Costs of staples in Brazil, including beef and rice, have started to accelerate following a drop in farm output blamed on El Nino.
Global prices for food commodities like grain and vegetable oil fell last year from record highs in 2022, when Russia’s war in Ukraine, drought and other factors helped worsen hunger worldwide, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Friday. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of commonly traded food commodities, was 13.7% lower last year than the 2022 average, but its measures of sugar and rice prices growing in that time. The drop in food commodity prices in 2023 comes despite a difficult year for food security around the world.
Nicaragua and China on Monday formally started trading under a new free trade agreement, allowing the Central American country to export some 71% of its products into the largest Asian market and free of tariffs. Among non-food items included in the agreement are leather, charcoal and wood, and automobile parts. The agreement excludes Chinese goods that could be problematic for the key Nicaraguan industries, such as meat and its offal, coffee, rice and sugar.