ABSTRACT
Since 2007, food prices have risen more sharply than the set of consumer prices in Brazil. The objective of the work is to compare food inflation in the first half of 2020 with that of 2007 and 2019, checking if there have been changes in its characteristics and reasons. Information from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica (IBGE) is used to analyze the Extended National Consumer Price Index (IPCA) at different levels of aggregation. Between 2007 and 2019, prices of food outside the home expanded more than that of food at home. Among the components of this, the prices of the least processed increased more than those of the most processed, indicating that the origin of food inflation was agricultural, with meat having a great contribution to the fact. In turn, in the first half of 2020, non-tradable products, beans, rice and fruits, vegetables and greens, were the ones that put the most pressure on inflation. Throughout the period, conditions of foreign trade, international price and exchange rate, had a strong influence on food inflation. In the first half of 2020, among the causes, increased demand for food in supermarkets gained relevance, apparently not accompanied by the expansion of supply.