PARIS: World food prices, including for wheat, fell in June for a third month running despite remaining near an all-time high, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Friday.

Export flow disruptions resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 and international sanctions on Moscow have sparked fears of a global hunger crisis. Russia and Ukraine, whose vast grain-growing regions are among the world’s main breadbaskets, account for a huge share of the globe’s exports in several major commodities, including wheat, vegetable oil and corn.

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After a record spike in March due to the war, the FAO food price index — a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities — fell 2.3 percent in June. It is still 23.1 percent higher than it was in June 2021.

“Although the FAO Food Price Index dropped in June for the third consecutive month, it remained close to the all-time high of March this year,” said Maximo Torero Cullen, chief economist at the United Nations agency.