Executive summary and key findings from the 2015-2024 edition : Prices for crops and livestock products showed diverse trends in 2014. Among crops, two years of strong harvests put further pressure on prices of cereals and oilseeds. Tighter supplies due to factors including herd rebuilding and disease outbreaks supported record high meat prices, while the prices of dairy products dropped steeply from historic highs. Further adjustments to short-term factors are expected in 2015, before the medium-term drivers of supply and demand take hold.
In real terms, prices for all agricultural products are expected to decrease over the next ten years, as on-trend productivity growth, helped by lower input prices, outpaces slowing demand increases. While this is consistent with the tendency for long-term secular decline, prices are projected to remain at a higher level than in the years preceding the 2007-08 price spike. Demand will be subdued by per capita consumption of staple commodities approaching saturation in many emerging economies and by a generally sluggish recovery of the global economy.
The major changes in demand are in developing countries, where continued but slowing population growth, rising per capita incomes and urbanisation all increase the demand for food. Rising incomes prompt consumers to diversify their diets by increasing their consumption of animal protein relative to starches. For this reason, the prices of meat and dairy products are expected to be high relative to the prices of crops; while among crops the prices of coarse grains and oilseeds used for feed should rise relative to the prices of food staples. These structural tendencies are in some cases offset by specific factors, such as a flat demand for maize-based ethanol.
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