Households spend €560.8 million on food in 2007
World Food Day is celebrated worldwide every year on October16. This year, the theme devised by the United Nations to mark the Day is: World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy.
To observe this event the National Statistics Office has, for the past few years, published a set of statistics on the production and consumption of food in Malta.
The NSO said that in 2007, these spent €560.8 million on foodstuffs. Major items included fruit and vegetables - €125.5 million; bread and cereals - €123.6 million; meat - €115.5 million; dairy products - nearly €80 million; and fish - €43.3 million. Last year, food consumption expenditure was estimated at 15.0 % of total private expenditure by final consumers in the local market. In
the previous year, this share had been estimated at 14.3 %.
In 2007, Maltese farmers took €20.2 million worth of vegetables and fruit to the organised markets, from the perspective of producer value. Of this, 14.6 % was in respect of the tomato crop. Increases in producer value were recorded for potatoes, onions and water melons. For potatoes, producers acquired 42 % more than in the preceding year while the onion crop yielded 57 % more value than in 2006. A downturn of 56 % was recorded in the producer value of
peaches when compared to 2006.
The main fish species taken to the fish market in 2007 included swordfish, dorado, blue fin tuna and shrimp, which contributed to a total producer value of nearly €5 million, as can be seen in Table 4. Pork and beef production amounted to 9.4 thousand tonnes, dominated by the production of the former and supplemented by 4.6 thousand tonnes of broiler meat. In addition, producers sold 39.4 million litres of milk.
Imported goods constituted a major source of food for Malta in 2007, with food imports being estimated at €427.4 million. Meat, fish, cereals and prepared foods dominated imports of edible items. In the same year, food inflation measured by means of the 12-month moving average rate was 4.35 %, while the annual rate as at December 2007 was 8.05 %.
