Food Is the Most Expensive It Has Been Since 2022, and Output Is Being Revised Down

The FAO Food Price Index averaged 133.3 points in August 2026, up 1.9% on July and the highest since late 2022, with sugar up 11.9% and the 2026 global cereal forecast cut to 2.98 billion tonnes.

By the UISC BD Editorial Desk · United Information Service Center · Published 11 September 2026 · 6-minute read

The FAO Food Price Index averaged 133.3 points in August 2026, up 2.5 points or 1.9 percent on the revised July level, and the highest since late 2022.

What Moved

• Cereals rose 2.2 percent month on month to their highest since May 2024.
• Sugar jumped 11.9 percent to its highest since June 2025.
• Vegetable oils edged up 0.6 percent to the highest since June 2022.

An 11.9 percent move in a single month in one commodity is not an ordinary fluctuation.

The Supply Revision

The FAO cut its 2026 global cereal production forecast by 3.4 million tonnes to 2.980 billion tonnes — now 2.0 percent below 2025, and the largest annual decline since 2018.

Prices rising while supply is being revised downward is the combination that matters. Either alone is manageable; together they compound.

The Causes

The FAO and market analysts point to extreme heat and drought in Europe, trade disruption arising from conflicts affecting the Black Sea and the Middle East, and — explicitly named as a forward risk — the threat of a severe El Niño.

That last one is the reason this story and our report on the strengthening El Niño belong together. Forecasters put the odds of a very strong event this coming season above 90 percent, and the drought corridor runs through the region that grows more than 90 percent of the world's rice.

So the August index reflects conditions that have already happened. The El Niño risk is not yet in these numbers.

What It Means in Bangladesh

Global food prices transmit into Bangladeshi households through two channels, and the second is the one that bites.

Imports. Bangladesh imports wheat, edible oil and sugar in quantity. Every one of those is in the categories that rose.

The share of income spent on food. A food price rise of the same percentage is a far larger shock to a household in Bangladesh than to one in Germany, because food is a much larger share of what it buys. This is also why the IMF's projection of global inflation rising to 4.7 percent on energy and food understates the effect where it lands hardest.

Bangladesh has substantial insulation on the staple that matters most. It is the world's third-largest rice producer and grows nearly all it eats, which is the single most important food security fact about the country.

That insulation is not total. A poor aman harvest pushes production onto irrigated boro, which costs more to grow — the exact link that makes solar irrigation a price policy rather than only an environmental one.

The Part That Is Working

Bangladesh's agricultural record is the reason this is a difficult year rather than a crisis year.

Third in rice, third in vegetables and sixth in potatoes, second in inland fisheries, self-sufficient in meat and eggs and 91 percent self-sufficient in milk.

A country that grows its own staple food is exposed to world prices at the margin. A country that imports its staple is exposed to them completely. Bangladesh spent five decades moving from the second position to the first, and a year like this one is what that investment was for.

What to Watch

Not the index. The next FAO cereal production revision, and whether the El Niño forecast verifies.

A high price with adequate supply is a household budget problem. A high price with a genuine shortfall is a different kind of problem, and the difference will be visible in the numbers before it is visible in the market.

Related reading

• World Leaders Gather at the UN on 22 September. A Bangladeshi Presides.
• Bangladesh Tea: 95 Million Kilos and a 2030 Target
• Bangladesh and Türkiye Move From Buying Weapons to Building Them Together
• Where Bangladesh Ranks in the World: 14 Global Top-10 Positions

Sources

• "FAO Food Price Index," Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations — fao.org
• "World food prices at highest since 2022 as supply risks mount, FAO says," BNN Bloomberg — bnnbloomberg.ca
• "Conflicts and extreme weather pushing global food prices higher, warns UN," Al Jazeera — aljazeera.com
• "How global food prices are up," Econlife — econlife.com