Overview of Food Prices: Recent Trends at Global, European and National Levels

In this short note, Con Lucey provides an overview of food prices, noting a number of distinct trends, finding that from 2020-2021, marked price increases were linked to the COVID pandemic and economic recovery, as well as transport infrastructure shortages and associated higher costs. More recently, rising energy costs and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have led to significant price increases, and raised questions for the European Commission with regard to European dependence on exports from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. The author briefly examines the impact of these factors at global, European and national levels, before providing some emerging conclusions.

The author, Con Lucey, was Chief Economist of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) from 1979 to 2008. He was a Council member of the IIEA for many years, and is a member of the IIEA’s UK expert group.