FOOD PRICES AND SEASONALITY - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 124

FIGURE 6.4 Distribution of millet prices in all markets during above average, average and below
average growing years, as measured by vegetation index (source: data used are
described in Brown et al ., 2008).
Seasonality in commodity markets across developing countries
Given the observed seasonality of food prices in places like West Africa, what can we say
about the seasonality of food prices and the impact of local production on local prices? In
regions outside the developed world, if local production is a significant factor, and the supply
of food fairly limited, we would expect to see both interannual variability driven by weather
shocks, and seasonality driven by cyclical changes in demand and supply (described in Figure
6.3 ). Areas that are dominated by the international commodity price should have very low
seasonality in food prices.
Global seasonality for maize prices is shown in Plate 16 . Here we show maize prices
instead of millet or sorghum because maize is consumed in West Africa as well as many other
regions around the world. Maize is one of the few global commodities that is grown and
consumed across many different agroecosystems and cultures (Chapoto and Jayne, 2009;