Every Monday, BBC World Service's secret shoppers fill their baskets with five staples to monitor global food prices. Richard Collings explains the purpose of the BBC World Service Food Price Index

It is a year since the first signs of the credit crunch began to show, affecting almost everyone in the world. Over that time, the prices of key ingredients such as wheat, maize and soya have risen to unprecedented levels. To track the rising cost of living across the globe, the BBC World Service Food Price Index has been set up.

Several factors are responsible for this rise in prices. Huge demand from China is one factor, channelling staple ingredients away from exporters' traditional markets. Some large Argentinean soya producers, for example, have signed contracts with the Chinese to provide as much as 75% of the country's entire crop.

For some, it seems, it's never been a better time to be a farmer; but consumers are feeling the pinch. We've seen riots in Indonesia as the government reduced its long-standing food subsidies, leading to even higher prices.

In India, there have been protests at the rising price of onions - a staple in most dishes. Food pricing is a sensitive political issue in the country, one which led to huge losses for the ruling party at local elections in India a few years ago.


The aim is to run the BBC Food Price Index for at least six months. It measures the price of five staple foods in eight countries every week. It is information that is useful for consumers everywhere. It does not compare like with like in each country because there are local variations in what people eat; the essence of this index is to provide a running measure of prices of items such as bread, flour, rice, milk and a kilo of beef. But in Nairobi, for example, maizeflour is also considered a staple so this features in the index for Kenya.

Official government statistics of food prices generally lag behind what is happening in the marketplace by a matter of months, so are of little practical use to our audiences. BBC World Service is sending its employees from key bureaux around the world direct to the same general provisions store every Monday as secret shoppers. This guarantees reliability. As far as we know, it's the only index of its kind in the world.


A bit about the methodology: starting 28 July 2008 each basket of goods was normalised to a cost of 100 in the first week. How much it would cost to buy the same basket in later weeks is then reflected in the rise or dip above or below 100.

Eight cities were chosen: Brussels, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Jakarta, Moscow, Nairobi, Skopje and Washington DC. Why these eight? We'd love to do the whole world but it would be an enormous task. We felt this spread would be fairly representative across the continents. However, this will not stop people from questioning why the Macedonian city of Skopje was chosen and not, for example, Belgrade and we're encouraging comment from anyone, anywhere on how food prices affect their lives via a special website.

BBC reporters and correspondents will also be able to rely on this index to help illustrate their despatches and interviews. In the first two weeks we saw an interesting drop in prices in Moscow, despite the conflict between Russia and Georgia. However, in Indonesia - where inflation is at a two-year high of 11% and there have been riots on the streets as a result - there was a big rise.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs predicts that the number of people classified as poor in Indonesia will rise from 37m to 42m this year as a direct result of the recent rise in prices of food and fuel. It's just one example of how our index is reflecting influences on news and social issues.

Richard Collings is an assistant editor for BBC Business Programmes and occasionally steps in to present. He was previously BBC South America Correspondent and has directed over 30 films, including one nominated for a Grierson Award - the UK's leading documentary prize - in 2007.
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