Delegates deliver their speeches during the launch of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO, new report "The Unjust Climate - Measuring the impacts of climate change on the rural poor, women and youth", in Rome, March 5, 2024. (PHOTO / AP)

PARIS — The United Nations food agency's world price index rebounded in March from a three-year low, boosted by increases for vegetable oils, meat and dairy products.

The Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) price index, which tracks the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 118.3 points in March, up from a revised 117.0 points the previous month, the agency said on Friday.

The February reading was the lowest for the index since February 2021 and marked a seventh consecutive monthly decline.

International food prices have fallen sharply from a record peak in March 2022 at the start of Ukraine conflict.

The FAO's latest monthly reading was 7.7 percent below the year-earlier level, it said.

In March, agency's vegetable oil price index jumped 8 percent month on month, the dairy index gained nearly 2.9 percent for a sixth straight monthly rise, while its meat index added 1.7 percent.

Those gains outweighed declines for cereals, which shed 2.6 percent from February, and for sugar, which fell 5.4 percent.

In separate cereal supply and demand estimates, the FAO nudged up its forecast for world cereal production in 2023/24 to 2.841 billion metric tons from 2.840 million projected last month, up 1.1 percent from the previous season.