Staple foods

On July 22, 2022, the UN and Turkey signed an agreement to open a safe maritime humanitarian corridor in the Black Sea. Through the Black Sea Grain Initiative, around 800 ships filled with grain and other food products have left three Ukrainian ports.

World food prices fell for a ninth month in a row in December but hit their highest level on record for the full year in 2022, U.N. data have showed.    

Food prices soared to a monthly record high in March after Russia invaded agricultural powerhouse Ukraine, a major supplier of wheat and cooking oil to the world.    

Wheat is 32% more expensive, and for sunflowers the annual increase is 35%. Maize prices the most - by 42%

The wheat harvest in Bulgaria is increasing by over 50% this year compared to 2020, crossing the limit of 7.1 million tons of production. This is the best level for the last five years.

Large food chains and vegetable exchanges in Bulgaria sell German and French potatoes as Bulgarian production and thus mislead their customers, National Potato Growers Association alerted. They have submitted complaints to the National Revenue Agency, Consumer Protection Commission and the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency with a request for inspection.

The total production of Romanian grain cereal dropped this year to almost half from 2019, due to the prolonged drought which affected some agricultural areas in the country, reaching a bit over 17 million tonnes, according to the data supplied by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR), at the request of AGERPRES.

Turkey exports flour to 164 countries around the globe, meaning that 90 percent of the world's population consumes Turkish flour, a top flour industry official told Anadolu Agency on May 12.

Turkey's state-run aid agency on May 8 distributed food packages and hygiene kits among 180 refugee families in Tunisia.

The aid was distributed by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) in cooperation with the Tunisian Union of Social Solidarity (UTSS).

Heeding public health directives to stay at home, now many Turks have returned to an age-old tradition of making homemade bread, leading to unexpected climbs in demand for both yeast and flour.       

Interior Minister Marcel Vela announced on Thursday evening that exports of wheat, barley, oats, corn, rice, wheat flour, soybeans, seed oil and sugar are to be suspended during the state of emergency. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Alexandru Florea, editor: Antonia Nita; EN - editor: Adina Panaitescu)

It appears Greek consumers will have rice and pasta in their pantries for several months to come, while supermarket data on the sale of flour suggests they are preparing to start baking their own bread. At the same time, sales of antiseptic tissues rose about eightfold in the week when the first coronavirus cases were reported in Greece, which explains the recent shortage.