Paris, 18 June 2010

The 2010 edition of the Agricultural Outlook marks the sixth year of collaboration between the OECD and FAO in publishing a projection of the global markets of key agricultural commodities. The Outlook brings together the commodity, policy and country expertise of both organisations, providing an assessment of agricultural market prospects for production, consumption, trade, stocks and prices of the included commodities. The goal of this collaborative work is to build consensus on how global agriculture may evolve in the coming decade and the key issues impacting its course.

Global agricultural production is anticipated to grow more slowly in the next decade but remains on track to satisfy estimated long term demand. In spite of the recent economic crisis, the agricultural sector has shown remarkable resilience, with strong supply response to recent high prices and continuing demand growth.

Real commodity prices to remain below recent peaks but well above previous decade

• International commodity prices are anticipated to average higher in the next decade compared to the decade before the price spike of 2007-08. This forecast is based on the resumption of economic growth, above all, in developing countries, increased demand due to rising biofuel production, and anticipated higher costs of energy related inputs.

• Latin America is the fastest-growing production region, with Brazil seeing growth of over 40% to 2019. Russia, Ukraine, China and India also show significant increases. More...

• The shares of the different agricultural commodities used for ethanol and biodiesel production (molasses, vegetable oil, coarse grains, sugar beet, wheat and sugar cane) in global production are expected to increase strongly over the projection period.

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