World food prices will drop this year as increase in unemployment in developing and developed countries slows growth in demand, the United Nations said.

“We have started to see a decline in food prices,” Jose Graziano da Silva, director general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said at a conference in Hanoi on Thursday. World economic expansion will slow to 3.3% this year from 3.8% in 2011, according to the International Monetary Fund.