World food prices are expected to remain stubbornly high this year and next, said the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Tuesday, which also forecast record harvest for cereals and paddy.

The Rome-based United Nations agency said in its Food Outlook for May that high and volatile agricultural commodity prices are likely to prevail for the rest of this year and into 2012 due to a sharp reduction in inventories and modest increase in crop output.

The FAO Food Price Index eased to 232 points in May from a revised estimate of 235 points in April. The index is still 37 percent above the same month last year. The agency cited the declines in global prices of cereals and sugar as reasons for the slight decline in the index in May.

In 2011, cereals production is expected to be a record 2.315 billion tonnes, up 3.5 percent. Last year, there was a one percent drop. Wheat production is seen 3.2 percent higher, while paddy output is expected to rise 2 percent to a record 463.8 million tonnes.

The record cereals production seen for 2011 is likely to barely meet consumption as the demand is also increasing, providing support to prices, the FAO report added.

"The Russian Federation's announcement that it will remove its cereals export ban from July 2011 could help relieve some of that pressure," FAO's Grain Analyst Abdolreza Abbassian said.

The next few months will be critical in determining how the major crops will fare this year, the FAO report said. Despite encouraging signs in some countries such as the Russian Federation and Ukraine, weather conditions, featuring too little and in some cases too much rain, could hamper maize and wheat yields in Europe and North America, it warned.

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