Despite bumper harvests in 2008 the higher cost of living and transport, producers’ growing profit margins and competition between traders and governments building up their cereal stocks have pushed up demand – and prices – before the lean season, according to FEWS NET (Famine Early Warning System Network).
While price hikes are good for producers and traders, they cut the buying power of poor urban households and pastoralists, wrote the food monitoring group in its alert.
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