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Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports and the impact of Western sanctions on Moscow have pushed up global food prices, fueled fears of looming grain shortages and heightened concerns about rising hunger around the world.
According to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Ukraine and Russia produce about a third of the wheat traded on world markets and about a quarter of the world’s barley. Exports from the two countries – which also include sunflower oil and corn used to feed livestock – account for about 12 percent of the total calories traded globally.
The war could affect at least three wheat crops in Ukraine, the country’s agriculture minister Mykola Solskyi said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, with last year’s crop still stuck in Black Sea ports with nowhere to store the incoming crop .
The Ukrainian wheat crop that feeds the world must not leave the country
US and European officials have accused Russia of weaponizing food and called for Ukraine’s ports to reopen. The crisis comes as climate disasters, conflict and economic strains from the coronavirus pandemic are already causing hunger to worsen in many countries, particularly in Africa and the Middle East.
The war in Ukraine could increase the number of people affected by acute food insecurity by 47 million this year, according to the United Nations.
Some places are already feeling the effects of the grain crisis. Here are five countries to check out.
Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is heavily dependent on imported grain. Wheat makes up a large part of the diet, but only 1 percent of the wheat consumed annually is produced domestically.
About 43 percent of Nigerians live below the poverty line. Malnutrition and food insecurity have stunted the growth of more than a third of children under the age of 5, according to government statistics from 2018.
The war in Ukraine has compounded other factors fueling hunger in Nigeria, including an insurgency in the northeast and below-average rainfall in the country’s middle belt and southern regions.
Nigeria was among a handful of nations placed on the highest alert level in the recent UN Hunger Hotspots report. This year, between June and August, the number of people in Nigeria who fall under the “emergency” category in the international classification system for food insecurity is expected to reach nearly 1.2 million.
“Africa has no control over production or logistics chains and is completely at the mercy of the situation,” Senegalese President Macky Sall, head of the African Union, said ahead of a trip to Russia this month find a solution to the crisis.
Sall later warned in an interview with France 24 that famine could destabilize the continent.
Somalia and Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa are dealing with a deadly crossroads of climate change, conflict and soaring food prices.
Along with Kenya, the countries are in the midst of their worst drought in four decades. The World Food Program warned that 20 million people in the region could starve due to drought by the end of the year.
49 million people face famine as war in Ukraine and climate disasters intensify
Countries in the Horn of Africa have had to import more food than usual this year due to “very severe climatic conditions,” said David Laborde, a senior research fellow at IFPRI. But Somalia relies on Russia and Ukraine for more than 90 percent of its wheat imports.
Domestic conflicts make access to food even more difficult. In Somalia, fighting between the government and al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabab fighters continues to result in forced displacement. In Ethiopia, the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has been fighting rebels from the northern Tigray region since 2020. More than 9 million people were in need of food aid because of the war, according to the UN, and hundreds of thousands were on the brink of starvation during some periods.
The war in Ukraine contributed to a spike in food prices in Ethiopia this spring, with aid groups reporting “massive shortages” of bread and oil.
Somalia and Ethiopia also fall under the United Nations’ highest alert category – Phase 5 of the integrated phase classification – where some populations are “identified or projected to experience starvation or death.”
More than 80,000 people in Somalia could face these conditions this year, according to UN forecasts. Children are already dying of malnutrition and nearly 2 million in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are in urgent need of treatment.
UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, has warned that the Ukraine conflict is hampering its ability to respond. The cost of therapeutic foods, which the organization uses to treat children with severe acute malnutrition, is expected to rise 16 percent globally over the next six months, Rania Dagash, UNICEF’s deputy regional director for East and Southern Africa, said this month.
The Middle East and North Africa region has been particularly hard hit by the conflict because of its proximity to the Black Sea, Corinne Fleischer, regional director of the World Food Program, told The Washington Post.
The coronavirus pandemic caused hunger in the region to rise by 25 percent. “We expect another increase of 10 to 12 percent because vulnerable people are now getting higher prices and are becoming dependent on food aid as a result,” she said.
Supply problems and war-related high food prices could “be the last straw for many, many people in the region,” said Fleischer.
Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat. Russia and Ukraine together supplied more than 80 percent of the country’s wheat imports before the war, so it was immediately hit by supply disruptions.
Traditional “baladi” flatbread is the backbone of the Egyptian diet, and the government subsidizes bread for more than 70 million of Egypt’s approximately 102 million people.
Famine is not a problem in Egypt, Laborde said. Instead, concerns revolve around the cost to the government of “maintaining its social safety net programs and avoiding some sort of political instability,” he said.
High food prices were among the economic problems that contributed to the outbreak of the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions. And price increases for bread and other commodities in Egypt in the 1970s sparked riots that prompted the government to quickly reverse course.
“Conflict breeds hunger, and hunger breeds conflict,” said Fleischer.
To stave off dissatisfaction, the government has been scrambling for new wheat suppliers, ordering Egyptian farmers to harvest their wheat early and asking for money from Saudi Arabia and the IMF to fund their bread subsidies, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The government has kept subsidies on bread but added tougher conditions for eligibility to cut spending. According to the Journal, the amount sellers can charge for unsubsidized baladi bread has also been capped, meaning bakeries and bread sellers are bearing the brunt of rising global wheat prices.
Tunisia is one of the countries that see major economic consequences of the war in Ukraine
The World Food Program has already provided food to 13 million people in Yemen, where a long civil war has pushed up food and fuel prices and caused widespread hunger.
His two children were dying. The crisis in Yemen forced him to save only one.
The agency normally buys half of the wheat for its global food aid from Ukraine. At a time when more and more people around the world need help, the cost of delivering it has risen, leaving the agency with significant budget gaps. WFP announced on Tuesday that it was suspending some of its food aid in South Sudan after funding ran out.
“We must now decide which children eat, which children do not eat, which children live and which children die,” WFP Executive Director David Beasley told The Post last month. The program already had to cut food rations for 8 million people in Yemen before Russia invaded Ukraine. Now, according to Fleischer, the agency fears that it will have to make further cuts.
As part of the Ukraine Relief Act passed in May, the United States provided $5 billion to help address global food shortages caused by the war.
Still, the fallout from the war in Ukraine could be a matter of life and death for some people in famine-prone and conflict-ridden countries.
“You can survive to the point where you can’t,” Laborde said.