The cost of a basket of staple foods remained stable in October, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's monthly food price index.

 image expired

Overall, the Food Price Index is at its lowest levels since August 2010.

Dairy prices continued to slide in October – falling by 1.9 percent due to increased output in Europe, where producers' problems are being compounded by the ongoing Russian trade embargo.

The Cereal Price Index held steady after sharp declines in recent months, as global wheat and maize production appeared set for record harvests. Declines were halted in October as maize harvest delays in the United States and deteriorating prospects for Australia's wheat crop led to firmer prices.

Even so, FAO raised its forecast for a record global wheat output this growing season (largely due to better than expected production in Ukraine). Maize output is also expected to reach a new record of 1.01 billion tonnes. Poorer maize prospects from China appear to have been offset by bumper harvests in the United States and EU.

However, the UN's farming bureau cut projections for total cereal production by around a million tonnes. At 2.5 billion tonnes, the full-year production figure looks set to come in 3.7 million tonnes below 2013's record output.

Global inventories of all the main cereals remain on course to hit a 15-year high, although the forecast was marked down by 2.7 million tonnes from October's projections to 624.7 million tonnes. The revised figure is still 8 percent above the level at the start of the 2014/15 growing season and would raise the global cereal stock-to-use ratio to a twelve-year high level of 25.1 percent.

According to FAO's November brief, global cereal use for direct human consumption is set to rise by 0.9 percent in line with population increases. Livestock use is set to increase by 2.6 percent. The growth in consumption by livestock is being driven in part by large quantities of low-quality wheat currently in markets being used for feed.