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After seven months of declines, the FAO Food Price Index rose slightly in March due to increased vegetable oil, dairy, and meat prices. The Index remained 7.7 percent below its March 2023 levels.

During 2021 and 2022, global food and fertilizer prices spiked due to several overlapping factors. Demand rose as the world economy emerged from the COVID-19 recession; global supply chains suffered major disruptions associated with the uneven recovery; and the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine—both key food and fertilizer producers—generated yet another shock.

The stability of rice, a food staple for nearly 690 million Southeast Asians, faces considerable challenges amid recent international conflicts, evolving trade policies, and climate change. Factors including an intensified El Niño, the conflict in Ukraine, as well as growing trade restrictions across Asia have collectively led to a deficit in the global supply of rice, constricting the availability of rice and posing significant threats to public health within Southeast Asia.

In the last few years Asia’s food security has suffered a series of crises induced by conflict, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, causing great disruptions to food supply systems and increasing  the number of people experiencing food insecurity. Now, pressure at four global ‘food chokepoints’—in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal due to geopolitical unrest, and the Panama Canal and the Mississippi River due to drought—are threatening Asia’s food security even more.

Six months after India introduced a set of export restrictions on rice with the aim of holding down domestic prices, global rice markets continue to feel the impact.