The AMIS Secretariat
The Secretariat is formed by the following international organizations and entities: FAO, IFPRI, IFAD, OECD, UNCTAD, the UN High Level Task Force (UN-HLTF), the World Bank, WFP, and WTO. Contributions from the International Organizations to the fulfilment of the functions of the Secretariat reflect those organizations’ comparative advantage and expertise. The Secretariat, housed in FAO headquarters in Rome, supports all functions of the Forum and the Information Group of AMIS.
Partners' contribution to AMIS
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
FAO has a well-established expertise in global, country and regional supply and demand analysis of major agricultural commodities, as well as food security assessments and capacity building. FAO’s widely disseminated information products and extensive price databases are instrumental to the success of AMIS. FAO is hosting the AMIS Secretariat in Rome.
International Food Policy Research Institute
IFPRI’s contributions to AMIS focus on bringing its modeling capacity in assessing the effect of futures prices on cash prices, price transmission from international to local markets, modeling the relationships between oil and food prices, measuring price volatility across AMIS commodities and defining price abnormalities and periods of excessive price volatility.
International Fund for Agricultural Development
IFAD contributes to AMIS resources, expertise, and its presence and partnerships in rural areas of developing countries. Its contribution focuses on strengthening the relevance of AMIS indicators, data, and analysis to these countries. Moreover, it focuses on helping to ensure that AMIS data and analysis inform policy responses to food price shocks in these countries, particularly as concerns smallholder agriculture and rural development.
International Grains Council
As a neutral and independent source of market information and analysis, the IGC’s contribution to AMIS focuses on promoting greater transparency in international markets by providing daily information on export price quotations and its Grains and Oilseeds Index (GOI) including sub-indices on AMIS commodities. The IGC also provides monthly updates of supply and demand estimates and forecasts for AMIS countries covering total grains, coarse grains, wheat, maize, rice and soybeans.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Building on its long established mechanism for monitoring the agricultural and trade policies of its members and key emerging economies, OECD assists AMIS in the task of assessing the potential effects of policy changes on the global market situation for key staple food commodities. OECD joins with FAO and other partner organisations to support AMIS in its capacity building function and contribute analysis on long term issues that have important impacts on market outcomes.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
UNCTAD participated in the G20 Agriculture and food price volatility meetings and policy fora during 2011 which helped elaborate The Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS). UNCTAD contributed comments and suggested text revisions to the Intra-agency Report entitled “Improving food market transparency and policy response for food security: the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS).” UNCTAD via the UN High-level Taskforce on Food Security also contributed to the G20 Food Security Agenda which was deliberated upon and examined within the G20 Development Working Group (DWG) 30 June - 1 July 2011 in Cape Town after preliminary examination by the G20 Food Security Experts on 14 - 15 June 2011 in Paris.
UN High-level Task Force on the Food Security Crisis
The participation of the HLTF Coordinator in AMIS reflects the political support of the UN Secretary General to the initiative. It ensures that the whole UN system is in a position to contribute to, and benefit from, AMIS analyses.
World Bank
The World Bank is a co-sponsor of AMIS. It provides analytical input, and intends to provide both staff to the AMIS Secretariat and finance to assist in the implementation of AMIS activities.
World Food Programme
WFP is participating in this initiative as both the user and producer of AMIS specific products. WFP provides staff time to the AMIS secretariat to help inform its outputs by monitoring and analyzing local market conditions including prices of staple food and fuel commodities, terms of trade, cost of food basket and consumer price indices from more than 60 developing countries. This work helps to estimate the transmission effects of international price shocks on local communities.
World Trade Organization
Trade and agricultural support policies have an important bearing on the state of international food markets. The WTO contributes its expertise to AMIS by sharing trade policy information that Members have notified to the WTO, principally in the areas of agriculture subsidies and import access.