91av

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are going hungry as food prices continue to rise as a result of everything from the coronavirus pandemic to India’s extreme heatwave to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Without meaningful action to make food more affordable, we may see starvation and political upheaval.

“The war in Ukraine, on top of all the other global crises, threatens tens of millions of people with food insecurity, malnutrition, mass hunger & famine. There is enough food in our world for everyone, but we must act together, urgently & with solidarity,” .

Food prices had already reached an all-time high before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Globally, nearly 300 million people – another record high – weren’t getting enough food, and, of those, 50 million were “knocking on famine’s door”, said the head of the UN World Food Programme, David Beasley, at a UN Security Council meeting on 19 May.

Unbalanced diet

Now things are set to get even worse. The hardest-hit nations include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Yemen, but even in wealthier countries, people on low incomes are being affected by rising prices, .

Not all who can afford enough calories to live can stretch to a balanced diet, says at the University of Bonn in Germany. That means people don’t get enough key micronutrients, such as iron, which can lead to health issues, such as a lack of red blood cells.

In children, such deficiencies can have detrimental effects that last a lifetime, says Qaim. . This situation may have become worse even before the latest price spike: a study published last week found that .

The food crisis isn’t just a humanitarian issue. Soaring food prices could lead to widespread unrest, mass migration, political instability and yet more wars. When prices spiked in 2007 and 2008, there were riots in many countries across the world. Another price spike in the 2010s is widely thought to have played a major part in the so-called Arab Spring, which, among other things, led to the continuing war in Syria.

“If you are not careful, we are going to have significant issues in other places [besides Ukraine] around the world,” . “Otherwise, you have a perfect storm, or a crisis within a crisis. And that we can’t afford right now.”

After the early 2010s, food prices fell somewhat. They began climbing sharply in 2020, for several reasons. The major one was the coronavirus pandemic disrupting supply chains around the world. The food that was grown didn’t always reach the places it was needed because of bottlenecks with shipping and higher transport costs.

There were also extreme weather events around the world, from drought in Brazil to severe heat in Canada, that hit crop yields. Such events are becoming more common and extreme because of global heating.

What’s more, after dropping at the start of the pandemic, fossil fuel prices have been rising, and there is a strong link between food and energy prices. Farming is an energy-intensive industry, using fossil fuels to do everything from making nitrogen fertiliser to transporting the resulting food. While estimates differ, one 2019 study found that .

Double whammy

This makes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a double whammy. It is leading to direct shortages, because Ukraine produces, among other things, . The invasion is also causing global energy prices to rise further, which will push up food prices indirectly.

High food prices aren’t always a bad thing, says Derek Headey at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). If prices stay high for several years, it can alleviate rural poverty because farmers earn more, hire more workers and invest in technology.

But the current spike in prices is happening at a time when the livelihoods of many people have already been hit by the pandemic, says Headey. “It’s happened so suddenly now, and happened at a bad, bad time.”

Many countries have run up big debts, so governments have less scope for helping those who are struggling. “It’s a crisis coming on top of a crisis, so it’s a huge challenge for social protection,” says Headey. “I see this persisting for quite a while.”

Events in Ukraine will continue to have a big impact on food prices over this year. The country still has significant stocks of wheat and sunflower oil, but its Black Sea ports are blockaded by Russia, and the infrastructure isn’t there to export much via land routes despite efforts to increase this. There is a danger that the next harvest could be lost as a result.

“If we do not sell what we now have in our stocks, we will have no place to store the new harvest,” . “If that happens, then the entire agricultural cycle in Ukraine will be disrupted.”

Then there is the weather. It is only May, but already China has warned that its winter wheat crop could be the “” due to heavy rains, the US winter crop has been affected by drought, there have been floods in Australia and South Africa, and extreme heat in India, Pakistan and most recently Spain.

There is no doubt that global heating is making such extreme weather events more common. According to the UK Met Office, for instance, climate change has made record-breaking heatwaves in north-west India and Pakistan more than 100 times more likely.

Even if no more extreme weather events hit yields this year, there is another crucial factor at play: high fertiliser prices. Fertiliser prices started rising in 2020 along with fossil fuel prices, and have gone up even further because Russia and Belarus are major exporters. They now cost three or four times as much as they did before the pandemic.

This could have major knock-on effects (see “The fertiliser problem”, below). How much a lack of fertiliser matters was demonstrated by an : within six months, rice yields were down by 20 per cent and local prices up by 50 per cent.

“In many regions, farmers cannot afford to bring fertilisers to their farms or, even if they could, the fertilisers are not available. Many fields are not being planted,” said .

Other farmers are changing what they plant. In the US, for instance, Qaim says farmers are planting less wheat and more soya beans because soya plants needs less fertiliser. That could ease vegetable oil prices, he says, but lead to even higher wheat prices.

Despite all these issues, the (FAO), issued on 6 May, remains positive. It has scaled back its forecast for wheat, but still predicts that both wheat and overall cereal production will be slightly higher than last year.

With so many factors in play, it is impossible to predict what will happen to food prices next, says Stefan Schmitz at the Crop Trust non-profit organisation. But they could certainly rise higher. “We have to prepare for a worse and worse situation,” he says.

So what should global leaders be doing right now? As 91av reported in March, turning less food into biofuel would have the biggest immediate impact.

“You can’t magic food out of nowhere, but you can reduce biofuel consumption overnight by adjusting policy incentives,” says Chris Malins at eco-consultancy . “Reducing biofuel consumption could compensate for the war in Ukraine many times over.”

This has recently been acknowledged by some political leaders. “Agricultural land is limited worldwide, and we urgently need it for food, as the war in Ukraine dramatically demonstrates,” German environment minister Steffi Lemke .

Even the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, an organisation that usually promotes turning palm oil into biofuel, that “this is the time to temporarily reconsider food versus fuel priorities”. But many in the biofuel industry are lobbying against any changes, and as yet little has changed, says Qaim.

The vegetarian solution

Another way to free up more food for people is to feed less to farm animals, he says. This could be done by reducing meat and dairy production and encouraging vegetarian diets. Even if the political will to do this existed, however, it would be hard to achieve. In contrast to biofuels, meat consumption isn’t driven by easily changed subsidies. Big price rises should curb demand, but according to the FAO Food Price Index, meat prices have only risen slightly so far.

Another thing that countries can do quickly, says Headey, is to sell some of their grain reserves. “The stock situation is much better than it was in 2007 and 2008,” he says.

Last but not least, those going hungry need more direct assistance, says Schmitz. “Food aid programmes must be strengthened.”

What governments shouldn’t do, Qaim, Schmitz and Headey all stress, is impose trade measures such as export bans in an effort to secure domestic food supplies. “Once one country starts to do it, the others will too,” says Schmitz. “That’s absolutely poisonous.”

Unfortunately, this is already happening. In April, Indonesia banned palm oil exports and in May, India banned wheat exports.

However events play out this time, global leaders should seize the opportunity to make future food crises less likely, says Qaim. With a swelling population on a planet increasingly affected by environmental destruction and climate change, food crises could become more frequent and severe if nothing is done.

The bottom line is that we need to produce more food using less land without relying on fossil fuels. “The interconnectedness between the food sector and the energy sector, all the way to geopolitics and things, is pretty worrying,” says Headey. Decarbonising farming would lower emissions and decouple food and fossil fuel prices.

We also need more crop diversity to make food production more resilient, says Schmitz. “The current agricultural system puts all its eggs in one basket,” he says.

That means preserving and exploiting genetic diversity as well as relying less on just a handful of species for most of our calories. It also means exploiting different types of crops, such as perennials and .

Embracing technologies such as gene editing would help too, says Qaim. “We cannot just bet on organic farming, because that has much lower yields.” If more food was produced organically, it would lead to more land clearance, deforestation and biodiversity loss. “That’s something we need to avoid by all means,” he says.

Qaim hopes the crisis will spur countries to shrink biofuel and meat production, and so reduce greenhouse emissions, boost biodiversity and ease the food crisis. “In my eyes, these are things that would lead to win-win-win outcomes,” he says. “Wouldn’t it be a great opportunity to use the crisis to get things started?”