All of these interacting factors “are going to be around for some time,” Laura Wellesley, a senior researcher at think tank Chatham House’s environment and society program, told CNN. “We may see peaks in food prices again and peaks in food insecurity, but certainly not a resolution of the situation anytime soon.” Global hunger has increased massively, from 135 million people acutely food insecure in 2019 to 345 million in 2022, according to the World Food Program (WFP). It includes “50 million people in 45 countries who are knocking on the door of famine,” David Beasley, WFP’s executive director, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on July 20, as he called on other donor countries, such as the Gulf states, to intervene . “prevent disaster”. The current crisis is far worse than previous food price spikes from 2007 to 2008 and from 2010 to 2012, which sparked unrest around the world, including revolutions in the Middle East. Food security experts have warned of huge geopolitical risk if action is not taken. This year has already witnessed political destabilization in Sri Lanka, Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, riots and protests taking place in Kenya, Peru, Pakistan, Indonesia… these are just signs that things will get worse in the future Beasley said.

Signs of hunger

In the Horn of Africa, a four-year drought has led to food insecurity and famine, according to aid groups. Somalia’s health facilities are seeing record levels of malnutrition after years of failed rains, the doubling of wheat prices and the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ijabu Hassan has lost three children to malnutrition this year, telling CNN that her 2-year-old daughter collapsed and died on their journey to the capital, Mogadishu, to seek help. “I cried so much,” she said, “I passed out.” As desperate parents like Hassan look for relief, the UN estimates that 7 million people – or more than half of Somalia’s population – simply do not have enough to eat.
Meanwhile, Afghans have seen their lives go from bad to worse since the Taliban seized power in 2021. Following the hasty withdrawal of the United States from the country last August, Washington and its allies have international funding to the country, which has operated largely aid for years and froze about $7 billion of the country’s foreign exchange reserves. Afghanistan’s economic crisis has been looming for years, the result of poverty, conflict and drought. But this year, as below-average harvests have led to unprecedented levels of hunger across the country, long lines for aid have become ubiquitous even in middle-class neighborhoods in the capital, Kabul.
Long-running conflicts in countries such as Somalia and Afghanistan have affected people’s ability to access food, and the climate crisis is only making the situation worse. Droughts in major crop-producing regions such as Europe and North America have pushed up food prices.
Extreme weather in parts of North Africa is a chilling reminder that, blockade or not, the food supply here is extremely insecure anyway. The region depends on wheat from Europe, especially Ukraine. Tunisia, for example, gets almost half of its wheat from the country to make its daily bread.
Data from EarthDaily Analytics, obtained using satellite imagery, shows how difficult it is for some nations here to fill the gaps themselves. Looking at crop coverage in Morocco, the images suggest a “disastrous wheat season” in the country, with production much lower than in recent years due to a drought that began there in late 2021 and continued into early this year. Morocco gets a fifth of its wheat from Ukraine and a larger 40% from France, according to Mickael Attia, crops analyst for EarthDaily Analytics. “The current drought in North Africa, specifically in Morocco, is deeply affecting their ability to produce their own crops, not to mention that in the past, Ukraine was one of the country’s largest food exporters. Replacement costs are very high and a struggle,” Attia told CNN. “The country needs imports for structural reasons — every year national consumption is far greater than production — and because the country is regularly exposed to massive weather events, drought and climate change will make things worse in the future.” Ukraine’s wheat production is also expected to be 40% lower than last year as its fields are affected by the war. Fertilizers and pesticides are harder to get. but also because of the cold pattern and drought in the west of the country in early spring, Attia said, adding that the effects could last well into next year. “If Ukrainian grain is partially lacking, of course due to low production and export difficulties then that will lead to greater food insecurity this year and next year,” he said. Other major wheat exporters have also been hit hard by extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change. And France should produce 8 percent less wheat than last year, Attia said. “May was dry in most of Europe and crazy hot in Western Europe, particularly affecting crops from France and Spain,” said Attia. “June was also a dry and warm month across most of Europe and accelerated the decline in crops in France, Spain and Romania.”

Pandemic and protectionism

Meanwhile, many countries’ efforts to alleviate food insecurity have been undone by the pandemic. It plunged the global economy into recession in 2020, disrupting supply chains and causing employment and transport problems. Governments began to face inflationary pressures and global food prices began to soar as production disruption and high demand from countries like China “really tightened that balance between supply and demand and pushed prices up,” Wellesley said. from Chatham House. The economies of the poorest countries have been left in tatters, while middle-income countries have been saddled with heavy debts, limiting their governments’ ability to provide social safety nets and provisions to help the most vulnerable in this food supply crisis, he added.
In Peru and Brazil, people working in the large informal sector lost their savings and power during the pandemic restrictions. “So these people moved from the middle class to the poor … in Brazil the number of people living in severe food insecurity is extremely high,” Maximo Torero, chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told CNN.
In 2021, a record 36% of Brazilians were at risk of hunger, surpassing the global average for the first time, according to the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), a Brazilian academic foundation, which analyzed Gallup data. The war brought home how much people and countries have come to rely on a complex and globalized commodity system. Europe’s reliance on Russian gas has exposed its vulnerabilities. While countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Somalia, Congo and Tanzania are some of the most dependent on Ukrainian and Russian wheat, nations such as Eritrea bought wheat exclusively from the two nations in 2021.
Analysts suggest the supply chain crisis may lead to more local or regional sourcing strategies — but that may take some time.
“Let me give you an example — Africa uses 3 percent of the world’s fertilizer,” Torero said, yet the Dangote fertilizer plant in Nigeria sends 95.5 percent of its product to Latin America. “Nothing stays in Africa. It’s not that (the) Dangote factory doesn’t want to export to Africa, it’s (because) there are too many obstacles to export (to other parts of) Africa,” he said, adding that infrastructure was poor and the risk is high. Going the other way and imposing protectionist policies is also problematic. As food prices soared after the Russian invasion, countries began to curtail exports. India, the world’s largest sugar producer, limited sugar exports to 10 million tonnes and banned wheat exports. Today, more than 20 countries have some sort of export restrictions, dashing hopes that these items might help alleviate hunger elsewhere.
“That has an immediate effect on prices going up, but over time, it’s also kind of eroding confidence and predictability in the global market,” Wellesley said.
Then there is the issue of fertilizer prices, which remain high because they are energy-intensive to produce and Russia and Ukraine are the main suppliers of its key ingredients: urea, potash and phosphate.
Some analysts warn that as fertilizer use declines, we’ll see lower yields in 2023. And while the main concern has rested on grain supplies, some worry that rice production, a cornerstone of many diets in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, could take a hit. amid high fertilizer costs.
Even if rice stocks are currently high, protectionism and people turning to rice as a substitute for wheat could affect prices. “Sub-Saharan Africa imports the most rice in the world, so if the price of rice rises, then the most vulnerable countries will be significantly affected,” said FAO’s Torero.
The Razoni, a Sierra Leone-registered ship bound for Lebanon, is carrying about 26,500 metric tons of maize. “To meet shipment levels in August 2021, we would have to see seven of these ships happening every day to get things back to where we were,” Jonathan Haines, senior analyst at commodity data group Gro Intelligence, told CNN . There is a lot of uncertainty about whether that can happen, but the flow will undoubtedly “really accelerate,” he added. The Ukrainian government and the Turkish Defense Ministry said three more ships were expected to leave Ukrainian Black Sea ports on Friday loaded with grain. As wheat prices fall to pre-war levels, Torero worries that the return of Ukrainian and Russian grain to the markets could further reduce wheat prices and…