Food Shortages Around The World:

Perfect storm: Pandemic, climate, war all contribute to food shortages around the world

Mary Villareal

Never before in modern history has the food crisis become so bad, to the point that it is being influenced and exacerbated by so many major problems at once. We are in a “perfect storm” and things are only going to get worse as the months roll along.

First, the global fertilizer crisis will result in a loss of production worldwide, affecting around 500 million people. Prices of crops from India to Vietnam to the Philippines have doubled or tripled in the past year alone, and with the shortages in fertilizer as an effect of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, crop yields are expected to drop another 10 percent in the next season, which translates to a loss of 36 million tons of rice. (Related: Food crisis incoming: War in Ukraine threatening global food supplies, half a billion people at risk of hunger.)

Wheat will have the same problems, as well. An agricultural commodity expert warned that the war in Ukraine alone could mean around 19 to 34 million tons of export production loss.

Ukraine and Russia are responsible for roughly 30 percent of the global exports of wheat, and 65 percent of sunflower. In the context where those markets are increasingly tight and interconnected, a slight disruption in supply can create some impact on their prices. If the war between the two countries continues, the loss could be as high as 43 million tons in 2023.

The prices of wheat products have also increased. From early March to early April, the price of wheat jumped almost 20 percent.

Moreover, with the bizarre weather patterns, the outlook for the months ahead does not seem too promising. In the United States, much of the winter wheat had been devastated by persistent drought. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 69 percent of the total winter wheat production is in an area experiencing drought, including hard red winter, soft red winter and soft white varieties. This includes 82 percent of the production in Kansas, 82 percent in Colorado, 99 percent in Texas and 99 percent in Montana.

Corn is not looking great, either – Russia and Ukraine are two of the largest global corn exporters in the world and the conflict is causing considerable instability, leading to its soaring prices.

The number of undernourished people has increased by over 10 million annually. Even before the pandemic hit, close to 700 million people were unable to acquire enough goods to meet their daily minimum dietary energy requirements. However, the pandemic pushed an additional 120 million people on the brink of dying from hunger.

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