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Russia’s war in Ukraine is squeezing food supplies in countries that depend on those two nations for critical grains and cooking oils.
The Black Sea halt to agricultural shipments has caused the price of wheat, fertilizer and other commodities to soar and raised concerns about a global food shortage.
Turkey is seeing a surge in cooking oil prices and people are scrambling for it. In Thailand, feed stock and fertilizer costs are rising. Egypt, the largest importer of Russian wheat has banned exports from its homegrown grain. Indonesia has also stopped exports of palm oil as a substitute for other vegetable oils. Aid groups fear that rising prices could worsen hunger in already vulnerable nations.
The Russian war is affecting two of the world’s agricultural powerhouses and comes as the global food system is already dealing with supply chain constraints due to the Covid-19 pandemic and climate-charged weather events.
Climate change could make the situation worse if agricultural production in the world’s other breadbaskets is disrupted this year by extreme weather events, said Jonas Jägermeyr, a climate scientist and crop modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences.
“Climate change is increasing weather and yield variability and if severe weather events such as droughts, heatwaves, or floods will hit this season there will be compound effects, destabilizing the food system further,” Jägermeyr wrote in an email. “China already indicated that their wheat outlooks are very poor and other world regions don’t look great either.”
Russia, the world’s leading wheat supplier, recently banned grain shipments abroad and sanctions are likely to affect future exports. Ukraine is a leading supplier of sunflower oils and a major wheat producer. It has stopped all port activity. The two countries together produce around 12 percent of the global food calories.
Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Egypt are the top three importers from Russia and Ukraine of wheat. Almost 50 nations, including some of the world’s poorest countries, depend on those two sources for more than 30 percent of their wheat needs, According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Many of these countries are looking for supplies from abroad to address the immediate crisis. The main concern will be next year’s harvest. If the war disrupts planting in April and May, “then we will be facing a serious situation,” Maximo Torero, chief economist for the Food and Agriculture Organization told the BBC News on Monday.
Torero estimates the war could cause wheat prices to rise by another 8.5%, forcing people to eat fewer foods at a time where hunger and malnutrition are increasing due to the pandemic.
A ‘need where there wasn’t any’
As climate change alters the landscape of global agriculture, this war is unfolding. An intergovernmental panel made up of climate scientists has found that rising temperatures are already affecting crop yields, quality, and reducing agricultural productivity. SubmittedAn assessment was released last month. Although most people have experienced negative effects, such as lost livelihoods and increased food insecurity around the world, not everyone has felt the same.
Global temperatures have led to productivity gains in Europe and North America, respectively. However, rising temperatures have caused extreme heat and downpours to West Africa, which has led to lower yields for crops like sorghum, millet, as well as a severe drought in Australia where it has reduced wheat production.
“Climate change and weather extremes that are intensified by more extreme weather are disrupting food supply in a lot of vulnerable countries,” said Kyle Wilkinson, a communications officer at the U.N. World Food Program (WFP). “It creates need where there wasn’t any.”
The war is likely make things worse. A ReportAccording to the WFP, 13.5 million tonnes of wheat and 16 millions tons of maize have been frozen in Russia and Ukraine as of now. Delays in delivery are especially dangerous for Afghanistan, Syria, and Ethiopia.
“The supply chain disruptions should be a wake-up call for people,” said Christopher Barrett, a professor of agriculture and development economics at Cornell University.
Russia is also the world’s top oil and fertilizer exporter. Both are essential to the global food supply. A study published by NatureBarrett co-authored the study that found that three-fourths (or more) of the food costs for people around the world are related to transport, processing, and distribution of food. Fuel plays a significant part. In the wake of the invasion, oil prices soared but have fallen in recent days.
“So the oil price shock matters because it gets picked up in the costs that manufacturers face, in the trucking to move food around,” Barrett said.
For fertilizer, rising fuel costs can also be a problem. Natural gas is a key ingredient in synthetic fertilizers that are used in many areas of the globe. Some companies have stopped buying Russian-based fertilizers because of the uncertainty created by the war. According to Torero (an economist for the FAO), shrinking access and fertilizers could cause a 30 percent drop in food supply in parts of Africa.
‘It could be very negative’
Experts are only beginning to consider the long-term effects of the war. Wheat is unique among all other crops in that it could benefit from a warming planet. There are a number of ways to make wheat more attractive. studiesHigher temperatures in northern latitudes could cause an increase in wheat production. This is not the case for other major staples such as rice and corn.
One of the most important questions arising from the war is whether other countries will increase wheat production to compensate for the shortages in Russia and Ukraine.
Kim Kroll, who retired recently as the associate director of Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said that if this happens on existing croplands in countries such as the United States, where corn or soybean growers switch to wheat, the climate impact is likely to be minimal. However, climate costs increase when new land is converted into cropland.
“In some cases, it could be very negative,” Kroll said. “If Ukraine can’t go in and plant wheat, basically where is that market for wheat going to come on? Is that going to shift agricultural production or is that going to increase the footprint of agriculture?”
Craig Hanson, vice president of food, forest, water and oceans at the World Resources Institute, said one risk is that higher prices could lead to more clear-cutting for food production — and that could lead to increased emissions by unlocking carbon stored in the soil.
He added that higher energy prices could also cause increased production of biofuels. This could also have an effect on land use.
“Land is finite, so you can only grow so much on it,” Hanson said.
Egypt highlights the potential risks. Officials there have said they’re planning to increase local wheat production to ensure food security. Barrett, a Cornell professor, said that Egypt’s climate today is not conducive to wheat cultivation.
He said that wheat was a Middle East crop and still remains a drylands one. But as the world has warmed, it’s gotten harder to produce wheat in the region of its provenance. That has meant a shift to higher latitudes, such as Canada, North Dakota — and Ukraine and Russia.
Continuing to produce wheat in places like Egypt will likely require irrigation — which could increase the use of fossil fuels for powering water pumps and raise demand for fertilizer. Barrett said that this could mean that wheat prices may rise.
“We are facing some scenarios that are pitting short-term against long-term,” said Olivia Lazard, a visiting researcher at Carnegie Europe who studies eco-transitions and climate security.
Lazard warned that this could lead to disastrous outcomes if other countries begin collecting arable land and hording it.
Barrett said that the world could also benefit from the current crisis if it helps to boost support for efforts decoupling food systems fossil fuel dependent.
This could allow for more localized production and vertical farming powered by solar energy. Additionally, there may be more plant-based alternative options to reduce the demand for feed crops.
“We need to be developing more diversified systems much more decoupled from the traditional land and water resources we’ve relied on so heavily and at such a high climate and environmental cost,” said Barrett.
