Global Food Price Index Screensaver
The Global Food Price Index screensaver charts the United Nations FAO's real Food Price Index — the world's benchmark measure of monthly change in international food commodity prices — refreshed by a background pipeline. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
How the Global Food Price Index screensaver works
A background pipeline reads the FAO's real published monthly Food Price Index series.
A chart plots the index over recent years, tracking real global food cost pressure.
The current index value and its change from the prior month are shown alongside the chart.
Figures refresh on the pipeline's schedule, matching the FAO's own real monthly publication.
A worked example
The chart's spikes align with real events — droughts, conflicts, supply shocks — that pushed global food prices up, straight from the FAO's own published series.
Settings & tips
- Accent recolours the chart line.
- Run
automation/run.py foodpriceindexon your pipeline machine to refresh the data. - The index tracks cereals, vegetable oils, dairy, meat and sugar together as a weighted basket.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the data real?
- Yes — it comes directly from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's own published index.
- Why does it need a pipeline?
- The FAO's index isn't reliably fetchable directly from a browser, so a small background script gathers it and saves a snapshot the saver loads — no key needed, just a server-side fetch.
- How often does it update?
- Monthly, matching the FAO's own real publication schedule.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.