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Commodities & Metals

Global Food Prices Down–UN

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Food prices, one of the greatest threats to the overall health of the global economy have fallen recently, and dropped very sharply in May according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization.

The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI) averaged 204 points in May 2012, down as much as 9 points (4 percent)  from April and the lowest since September 2011. At this level, the FFPI would be about 14 percent below  its peak in February 2011. International prices of most commodities  (composing the FFPI)  weakened in recent weeks on generally favourable supply prospects amid growing economic uncertainties and a strengthening US dollar.

The drop not only takes some strain off inflationary pressures in large nations which include China. It also helps people in the poorest countries where prices have caused an extremely large portion of people’s’ incomes to go to food, leaving little for shelter, clothing,and other basic needs.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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