Policy Support and Governance Gateway

Agricultural Market Information System - AMIS

The Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) is an inter-Agency Platform to enhance food market transparency and encourage coordination of policy action in response to market uncertainty. The initial focus of AMIS is on four crops that are particularly important in international food markets, namely wheat, maize, rice and soybeans.

AMIS seeks to strengthen collaboration and dialogue among main producing, exporting and importing countries. Apart from G20 members plus Spain, participants in AMIS include seven major producing, consuming and exporting countries of commodities covered by AMIS. Together, these countries represent a large share of global production, consumption and trade volumes of the targeted crops (typically in the range of 80-90 percent), AMIS reaches out to other key stakeholders in international food markets such as commodity associations and institutional investors.

Because it involves all major importing and exporting countries together with all major private operators on the world food market, AMIS generates harmonized analysis and information on stocks, prices, trends and forecasts, hence permitting to avoid the contradictory information signals that occurred during the 2007-2008 food crisis.

The AMIS Secretariat is formed by the following international organizations and entities: FAO, GEOGLAM, IFPRI, IFAD, IGC, OECD, UNCTAD, the UN High Level Task Force (UN-HLTF), the World Bank Group, 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. It is governed by a Steering Committee that unites representatives from each of the eleven member organizations.

Region:
Global
POLICY THEME:
Trade Policy
FAO ROLE:
Strategic Partner