World Food Day was marked in Dublin, on Friday, 14th October 2011 at a conference for invited guests. The theme of this year's conference was:
Food Prices: From Crisis to Stability - Building Resilience in Africa's farming communities See full list of speakers for the 2011 gorta Conference.
The conference was streamed live on this site on 14th October. Video footage from the event will be available soon to view on-demand on this website.

BETWEEN 2005 AND 2008, the world's staple food prices soared to their highest levels in 30 years. Food riots broke out in more than 20 countries. Editorialists decreed the end of cheap food. But then, after peaking in June 2008, prices slumped again - falling 33 percent in six months – as a vast financial and banking crisis threw the global economy into recession.

The downturn was short-lived, however. In 2010 grain prices shot up 50 percent and continued to soar into 2011 before starting to dip somewhat in the second quarter of 2011. And at that point what would happen next was very much an open question.

Economists believe that the kind of price roller-coasters experienced since 2006 are likely to recur in the coming years. In other words food price volatility - the technical term for the phenomenon - has probably come to stay. That is not good news. Price swings, upswings in particular, represent a major threat to food security in developing countries. According to the World Bank, in 2010-2011 rising food costs pushed nearly 70 million people into extreme poverty.

"FOOD PRICES – FROM CRISIS TO STABILITY" has been chosen as this year's World Food Day theme to shed some light on this trend and what can be done to mitigate its impact on the most vulnerable...read more

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