The world's food import bill will fall more than 20 per cent this year as agricultural commodities trade well below last year's all-time highs, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said yesterday.

But the impact of the economic crisis on people's purchasing power is set to offset much of the benefit of lower agricultural commodities prices, the FAO said in its biannual Food Outlook report. In its first forecast about this year's food import bill, the FAO said the cost of importing agricultural commodities will fall to $790bn (€555bn, ￡486bn), down 22 per cent from last year's record of $1,015bn. But it warned that the “deteriorating economic environment in which the falls are taking place could offset much of the benefit.

“Eroding purchasing power through a combination of falling incomes and real exchange rates . . . afflicts the affordability of food, however cheap it has become on the international market place,” the FAO said.