Ukraine. “The question is not whether we are moving into a global food crisis - it's how large the crisis will be”
Full details
| Authors & editors | |
| Publisher | Milling & Grain |
| Year of publication | 2022 April |
| Languages | |
| Medium | Digital |
| Edition | 1 |
| Topics | Contemporary news > 2022 |
| Tags | |
| Scope & content | One of Ukraine's biggest food producers MHP, says that if its operations should fail, it would have a "catastrophic" impact on the country's population, adding that its survival is critical to the country. Russia’s military assault on Ukraine is expected to have significant implications for global supply chains. Both Ukraine and Russia are both major exporters of basic foodstuffs, so the war has already hit crop production, driving up prices across the world. And it is only going to get worse. Russia and Ukraine together make up nearly a third of global wheat exports, 19% of exported corn and 80% of sunflower oil - the third most traded vegetable oil internationally. According to the US Department of Agriculture In 2020, Ukraine alone produced 48 percent of the world's sunflower oil exports in 2020. Russia also produces enormous amounts of nutrients, like potash and phosphate - key ingredients in fertilisers, which enable plants and crops to grow. At a time when the world is still licking its wounds post Covid, with other factors like Brexit here in the UK also having a profound effect on commodity prices, the declaration of war has seen wheat prices more than double in the space of a month. Climate change and a fast growing global population had already been adding to the challenges that the global food production system was facing too – with all of this already taking hold well before the pandemic started. Read more about: A catastrophic impact A shock to the global supply & cost of food Countries are hoarding supplies Mitigating the disaster A paradigm shift is needed |
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