© Michael Tewelde
A drought-starved herd in Ethiopia in February.
From record to record. In March, the international prices of the FAO food basket increased by 12.6% compared to February and by 33.6% compared to March 2021. Ever the index of the United Nations organization for l he food and agriculture had reached such heights since its inception more than three decades ago – and it was already the case last month. “This new increase is explained by the record levels reached by the sub-indices of vegetable oils, cereals and meat and by the increase, also considerable, of those of sugar and dairy products”, stresses the FAO. For cereals, the increase observed is 17.1% in one month, and in particular 19.7% for wheat and 19.1% for corn. The prices of vegetable oils rose by 23.2%, mainly driven by sunflower oil. Those of sugar 6.7%, meat 4.8%, dairy products 2.6%.
In addition to the recurring hazards linked to the climate or to epidemics such as avian flu, these strong increases are mainly explained by the war in Ukraine, by its consequences on production and exports, as well as on the prices of the world markets for raw materials. For sugar, for example, the FAO explains that one of the “Factors of this increase were the rise in crude oil prices, as was the appreciation of the Brazilian real, while the favorable production outlook in India prevented a larger monthly price increase“. Above all, Ukraine and Russia occupied a major place in world agriculture before the conflict. These two countries accounted for 30% of world exports of wheat, 20% of those of maize and 75% of those of sunflower oil – of which Ukraine is also the world’s leading exporter.
“Collapse of the food system”
For the poorest countries, this surge in prices risks causing a “hurricane of famines and a collapse of the global food system”, alerted already in mid-March the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres. It will also exacerbate the famines that are already affecting the Sahel and several West African countries: the OECD estimates that 27.3 million people need emergency food aid in these regions. At the end of March, David Beasley, director of the World Food Program (WFP), which feeds 125 million people around the world, warned the UN Security Council of the impact “devastating” that this crisis was going to have on the operations, recalling that until the war, half of the cereals that the WFP bought came from Ukraine and that if the war did not end, “the world will pay a high price. The last thing we wanted to do at WFP is take food from starving children and give it to starving children.”.
Well aware, and for years, of the diplomatic weapon that food raw materials are, Vladimir Putin used it last Tuesday. While Westerners were preparing new penalties the day following the discovery of the Boutcha massacre, the Russian president threatened: “This year, once morest a backdrop of global food shortages, we will have to be more attentive to food deliveries abroad and monitor in particular the conditions of these exports to countries which conduct a hostile policy once morest us.
