The EU food trade suffered devastating blows in 2009’s first quarter but the recession’s impact on European food exports seems to be levelling off, a report from Brussels has claimed. 


The latest MAP (Monitoring Agri-trade Policy) noted monthly trade data available for the first quarter of 2009 indicated “a year-on-year contraction of EU agri-food exports of 12% in value (EUR2.3BN)”.


This followed four years of export growth, with EU agri-food exports in January-March 2009 being 3% below the first quarter of 2007.


However, the year-on-year rate of decrease in exports stabilised in February at -15% and slowed down in March to -5%, “thus indicating that it may be bottoming out”.


Click here for the full report.