Forty three developing countries depend on exports of a single agricultural commodity for more than 20 percent of their total revenues from merchandise exports. Most of them suffer from widespread poverty, with more than three-quarters classified as least developed countries. Most common among the commodities they depend on are coffee, cocoa, cotton, sugar and bananas. For non oil-exporting countries, agricultural exports represent the mainstay of foreign exchange earnings. Nearly all of Malawi's agricultural exports, for example, come from tobacco and tea, Benin depends on cotton for over 80 percent of its merchandise export earnings, Ethiopia relies on coffee for over 70 percent of agricultural exports, Cuba's agricultural exports are about one-third from sugar, while bananas make up 30 percent of Ecuador's agricultural export earnings. The following section of Food Outlook provides a brief overview of price trends and other developments for these commodities.
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