How FOMA works

Everyday 31 feeds related to global food prices and food security are monitored through Google news. Once identified, the stories are then tagged with a star if they belong to the six major categories like food prices, commodity prices, etc. After each day, all starred articles are saved and uploaded to the FOMA (built by Sophic Systems Alliance).

FOMA uses linguistic and semantic object network-mapping algorithms to analyse the relationships between key terms found in each article. After the articles are uploaded, the tool scans the complete database of articles for select set of key words, which allows a detailed analysis of text within the articles and also looks at phrases in the articles that influence commodity price volatility and food security.