Abstract

Food and agriculture’s volatile prices create uncertainty and risk for producers, traders, consumers and governments, and can have extensive negative impacts on the agricultural sector, food security, and the economy in both developed and developing countries. The Organization for Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (FAO) poses that price volatility has its main negative impact in food security, i.e. it substantially limits the economic access of people to a secure and sustained provision of food. After the sharp price surge of 2007–2008, agricultural commodity prices have experienced considerable volatility and along with other factors, collaborated to raise the sum of undernourished people to more than 1,000 million around the world. The recent volatility of agriculture commodity prices that started again in 2010 is now considered a global matter that needs addressing, and as such, was specially featured in the last G20 summit in November 2011. According to FAO specialists in the 37th CFS summit, the drivers behind the volatility trend may continue in the long-term, thus posing further uncertainty. The proposed global policies may help to cope with this issue in the short-term, but over the long run another set of significant measures will be needed to definitely tackle to food insecurity. This paper aims to sketch a critical frame to analyze those policies.