SDG #2 is to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”
Within SDG #2 are eight targets, of which we here focus on Target 2.c:
Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility.
Target 2.c has a singular indicator:
Indicator 2.c.1: indicator of food price anomalies.
An indicator of food price anomalies is a measure of market prices which deviate much higher-than-normal prices. One of the means to measure this is via a consumer price index, or CPI. A CPI is a statistic measuring the inflation experienced by households, or the price changes of household expenditure. Within this, different categories of household expenditure can be broken down from the total, such as food expenditure.
At the international level, FAOSTAT, the statistical body of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) collects this data.
This responsibility is a function of Article I of the FAO Constitution, which calls on the FAO to “collect, analyse, interpret and disseminate information relating to nutrition, food and agriculture.”
The FAO uses the FPMA, or Food Price Monitoring and Analysis, a tool which holds information and analyses of consumer prices of basic foodstuffs over the years across developing countries. Thanks to such tools and data, this evidence can be used to help make political decisions about food and agriculture at the national and international level.
