Food Price Forecasting and Alert for Price Spikes

Overview

The price forecast and alert tool is a state-of-the-art approach for humanitarian aid professionals, scholars, students and anyone else interested in the food security implications of staple food price volatility. It is composed of two distinct methodologies for price forecasting and for detecting price spikes based on WFP’s Alert for Price Spikes (ALPS) indicator. This web-page is designed to inform WFP’s internal operational programming related to cash, vouchers and local procurement while triggering early warning and further food security and market analysis, including monitoring.

How the price forecasting works

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past."

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

How the Alert for Price Spikes works

"The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating. Different accidents may sometimes keep them suspended a good deal above it, and sometimes force them down even somewhat below it."

A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations

 Markets

 Commodities

3 Years 1 Year

ALPS & Forecast