FAO’s September index rose 1.5 percent from August. Its international commodity basket provides context for food costs, without measuring the price of a particular household’s groceries.
The latest FAO Food Price Index available for this October 27 source review puts September 2026 at 136.0 points, an increase of 1.5 percent from the revised August reading. FAO’s October 2 release reports higher cereal, vegetable oil and sugar indices, a decline in meat prices and a broadly stable dairy measure. The overall index was 5.8 percent above its level a year earlier.
The organisation describes the index as a monthly measure of international food commodity prices. It combines five commodity groups using export share weights, rather than recording what a shopper paid at a particular market. FAO separately directs readers to its Food Price Monitoring and Analysis tool for national retail and wholesale information.
Our reading of that distinction is practical, a global increase can provide context for cost pressures but cannot establish the change in a family’s own food bill. A comparison at home needs the same products, quantities and dates. The release is a September observation published in October, not a forecast for Halloween shopping or a new daily price survey. The reference photograph shows rice stocks in Nigeria in 2024, not a Trinidad and Tobago shop or a sample collected for FAO’s September index.
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