Rising food prices and their implications for employment, decent work and poverty reduction

The trend towards rising food prices, as observed over the past three years, accelerated significantly in 2008. The resulting global food crisis has serious implications for efforts to attain the Millennium Development Goals, especially Goal 1 on the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger and the global goal of achieving decent work for all. This is principally because the poor typically spend a larger share of their incomes on food and are, therefore, the most vulnerable to increases in the prices of food. While some people are adversely affected by higher food prices, however, others benefit from them, depending on whether they are net producers or consumers of food staples and the extent to which wages are adjusted to reflect higher food price inflation.