A recent report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) highlights the challenges to global food security, but particularly for people in developing countries who import most of their food with a burgeoning dollar.
Unctad highlights that the current food crisis has worsened following the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine and the strength of the dollar.
On other occasions, while food prices rose, the value of the green bill — the main currency of foreign trade — fell, and with its devaluation, the final cost of local currencies fell, the research notes.
But the dollar rose 24 percent between May 2021 and October 2022 as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to curb inflation in the United States.
For developing countries that are net food importers, the international market is a lifeline, but as dollars become more expensive to buy, preventing millions of people from starving is also more difficult, stresses UNCTAD.
This combination of high food prices and a strong dollar presents a “double burden” that’s forcing people to make tough decisions to make ends meet, such as skipping meals or having a child withdrawn from school, it said it in the report.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the prices of the most traded groceries were at an all-time high of 135.7 points in November, down from the all-time high of 159.3 points in March.
Acute food insecurity has tripled in three years from 135 million before Covid-19 to nearly 350 million today, according to FAO and World Food Program data.
In light of this panorama, some of the international organization’s proposals to alleviate the food crisis are: easing financial restrictions, ensuring open trade and access to stable food, and increasing food availability nationally and internationally.
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