Joseph Glauber, USDA chief economist, said the impact of the economic crisis on food consumption would depress agriculture commodity prices temporarily, but he warned that prices would remain well above average for the eight years since 2000.

Mr Glauber told the Financial Times that the outlook was “for a return to higher prices” as some of the pressures that drove last year’s increases and relatively strong growth in emerging markets “will return to play a major role” this year or in early 2010. “This is going to be again a tough year [for poor countries],” he said.

The USDA forecasts US farm-gate wheat prices at below the 2008 record level, but above the 2006-07 average, when prices started to climb, triggering a global food crisis.

The prospect of higher prices was a concern for developing countries just as the economic crisis hit their prospects, the conference heard. Traders warned some African countries were facing difficulties securing imports of food commodities amid tight credit.

Christopher Delgado, a policy adviser in agriculture at the World Bank, warned the conference that in spite of a drop in food prices, corn prices were at least 40 per cent above the 2003-06 average, and rice prices 100 per cent higher. “The food crisis has not gone away,” he said. “In fact, it is coming back.”

The number of hungry people in the world last year jumped to almost 1bn because the impact of the global food crisis.

The long-term impact of the food crisis is to push countries towards more protectionist food policies.

A key concern continued to be the export bans that some big sellers of agriculture commodities have imposed in the past 18 months. Vietnam, the world’s second biggest exporter of rice, announced last week a four-month ban on overseas rice sales. In Argentina, speculation has mounted that the government could set up a grains and oilseeds trading board to grant it greater control over a key revenue-earning sector of the economy.

Wayne Jones, head of agri-food markets at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, said developing countries were moving from “imports to outsourcing” production on agricultural land overseas, and from “private to public market interventions”.

“For countries that are low-income, food-importing countries, this [shift towards higher agriculture prices] is scary,” he said.

Financial Times 2/3/09