The FAO/GIEWS Country Cereal Balance System (CCBS) is a database of annual supply and utilization balances for main cereals, covering all countries of the world. It has been maintained by FAO/GIEWS since 1980 and is updated on a continual basis. This statistical report, which is a subset of CCBS data, presents the current-year cereal supply and demand balances for all sub-Saharan African countries, highlighting cereal import and food aid requirements...

An FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission visited Ethiopia from 16 November to 12 December 2008 to estimate the 2008 main meher season cereal and pulse production; review the 2008 secondary belg season harvests; forecast the 2009 belg season production; and assess the overall food supply situation for the 2009 marketing year (January/December). Accompanied by experts from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Central Statistics Authority (CSA)...

The GIEWS Updates are issued by FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) from mid-2004. The updates focus on developing anomalous conditions aimed at providing early warnings, as well as latest and more elaborate information than other GIEWS regular reports on the food security situation of countries, at both national and sub-national levels.

As the year draws to a close, FAO’s latest estimates confirm that a new record high level of global cereal production was achieved in 2008, sufficient to cover the expected increase in utilization in 2008/09 and also allow for a moderate replenishment of world reserves. Most of the increase in production this year has been among the developed countries, with that in the developing countries rising just marginally. In the...

FAO and WFP conducted a Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission (CFSAM) in the Democratic People’s Republic of (DPRK) from 9 through 24 October 2008. This was the first such exercise since 2004; in late 2005 the DPRK Government had decided to sharply curtail humanitarian assistance after a short series of good agricultural years. Until 2008, food aid operations by WFP and other actors had thus reduced considerably, and further...

The FAO/GIEWS Country Cereal Balance System (CCBS) is a database of annual supply and utilization balances for main cereals, covering all countries of the world. It has been maintained by FAO/GIEWS since 1980 and is updated on a continual basis. This statistical report, which is a subset of CCBS data, presents the current-year cereal supply and demand balances for all sub-Saharan African countries, highlighting cereal import and food aid requirements...

The previous (June 2008) issue of Food Outlook foresaw world prices of major agricultural commodities declining from the record levels they had just reached, amidst favourable prospects for global supplies. Since then, prices have indeed fallen, but farther and faster than can be explained through production gains alone. Underlying the price slide, in excess of 50 percent from their recent peaks, are other important factors, including the financial crisis, the...

World cereal production in 2008 is forecast to increase 4.9 percent to a record 2 232 million tonnes, considerably up from earlier predictions after better than expected results from the major harvests gathered in the past two months. Based on the latest production forecast, a significant improvement in the global supply and demand balance for cereals in the 2008/09 season can be expected. Even allowing for a larger increase in utilization...

The FAO/GIEWS Country Cereal Balance System (CCBS) is a database of annual supply and utilization balances for main cereals, covering all countries of the world. It has been maintained by FAO/GIEWS since 1980 and is updated on a continual basis. This statistical report, which is a subset of CCBS data, presents the current-year cereal supply and demand balances for all sub-Saharan African countries, highlighting cereal import and food aid requirements...

Bangladesh suffered from widespread monsoon floods, followed by a severe cyclone resulting in the loss of an estimated 1.4 million tonnes of Aman rice in 2007. Food security of the country has been significantly and adversely affected by rising food prices. At the request of the Ministry of Agriculture of Bangladesh, a joint FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission visited the country from 14 April to 6 May 2008....