Global cereal output should reach 2,492 million tonnes this year, up 7.7 percent over 2012, leading to falling grain prices, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said today.

“We are heading for a bumper harvest in food grain,” FAO Asia-Pacific representative Hiroyuki Konuma said.

According to the FAO’s latest Food Price Index report, maize production in 2013 was expected to increase 10.5 percent year-on-year, wheat by 7.6 percent and rice by 1.3 percent.

With grain output on the rise, food prices fell 1.9 percent in August, compared with July.

Thailand’s benchmark price for Grade-B rice has fallen 15 percent over the past 20 days, as Thai exporters have reduced their prices on the international market.

Thailand has an estimated stockpile of 18 million tonnes of rice, while India’s stockpile amounts to about 35 million tonnes, FAO rice expert Sumit Broca said.

Both countries have been buying rice from farmers at subsidised prices, resulting in huge stockpiles as other countries have been better able to drop their prices on the global market to meet demand.

“It’s quite likely that rice prices are going to fall further this year,” Broca said.

- dpa