EU food manufacturers will have to pay high prices for cereal inputs this year, although there is the prospect of some relief in the medium-term, the European Commission has predicted.


In an assessment of food market and income prospects for 2007-2014, Brussels noted that the current “very tight market situation should maintain cereal prices at high levels in the early part of the projection period until market stocks in the EU replenish”.


Reforms to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, including the phasing-out of maize intervention, should then kick in and raise production, lowering prices in the medium-term.