ODI’s food prices updates focus on tracking international prices of key staple cereals maize, rice, and wheat, and provide commentary on events in markets that affect these prices. They also follow international food and commodity price indices.

Key Points

·        High global harvests are projected for 2013/14 for maize (963M tonnes), milled rice (479M tonnes), and wheat (696M tonnes) crops.

·        Spot prices of maize and wheat in June remain high at US$298 a tonne for maize and US$323 a tonne for wheat: these are little changed from February 2013.

·        Thai export rice prices have dropped over the last few months, so that in June 2013, Thai A1 Super was some US$516 a tonne, down by about US$50 since February.

·        Thai rice prices remain considerably higher than prices of other top exporters however; for instance, Vietnamese 25% B was in May 2013 selling at US$352 a tonne. This difference for similar grade rice is unlikely to persist.