One of the main goals of the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) is to establish market indicators that can be used to monitor price volatility and serve as a forward-looking early warning system for policy makers, producers and consumers.

This workshop, organized by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), attempted to derive a set of standard measures by reviewing, validating and improving existing indicators of its member organizations. To this end, it looked at the Excessive Food Price Variability measure of IFPRI; the Food Price Crisis Observatory of the World Bank; FAO’s work on volatility; and the Alert for Price Spike indicator of the World Food Programme. The workshop also reviewed regional and country-specific measures with presentations of IFPRI’s work on the transmission of global volatility to local markets; measures of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSnet); the Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS); and the World Bank research using vegetative indices to identify a potential price impact on local markets.

A full report of the outcomes of the workshop can be downloaded here.