Updated Agricultural Commodity Market Tools Provide Expanded Price and Trade Data

Asymmetry of information is a major obstacle to increasing global food security. Having access to reliable food price and market information is critical for policymakers, food policy experts, and researchers to be able to respond quickly to dynamic developments in the global food system.
The updated and expanded Agricultural Commodity Market Tools , provided by The Food Security Portal, now provide an increased collection of datasets to track global commodity prices, news, and production, export, and import information. The tools cover four major commodities: wheat, maize, soybeans, and rice.
The Annotated Price Timeline tools provide a timeline of monthly prices dating back to 2007, annotated with monthly synopses of market-related news. The tools also include data for international exchange rates and oil prices, as well as related news headlines. The Main Market Players tools provide information and data regarding major market shareholders for each commodity. Users can view data on production, exports, and imports based on the top 25 main country producers of the past five years. This information can help explain past food price trends and market policies, which in turn will inform policymakers’ response to the current global economic situation and prepare them for changes to the global food system in the future.