On Monday, 14 March, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.
Guterres said:
Food, fuel and fertilizer prices are skyrocketing. Supply chains are being disrupted. And the costs and delays of transportation of imported goods – when available – are at record levels.”
He added that this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.
Poorer countries had already been struggling to recover from the lockdowns and the closing down of much of the global economy. There is now rising inflation and interest rates and increased debt burdens.
Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil, the fourth largest exporter of corn and the fifth largest exporter of wheat. Together, Russia and Ukraine produce more than half of the world’s supply of sunflower oil and 30% of the world’s wheat.
Some 45 African and least-developed countries import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia with 18 of them importing at least 50%.
Prior to the current crisis, prices for fuel and fertilizer had been rising. It was clear before COVID and the war in Ukraine that long global supply chains and dependency on (imported) inputs and fossil fuels made the prevailing food system vulnerable to regional and global shocks.
The coronavirus lockdowns disrupted transport and production activities, exposing the weaknesses of the system. Now, due to a combination of supply disruption, sanctions and Russia restricting exports of inorganic fertilisers, the global food regime is again facing potential turmoil, resulting in food price increases and possible shortages.
Aside from it being a major producer and exporter of natural gas (required for manufacturing certain fertilizers), Russia is the world’s third-largest oil producer and the world’s largest exporter of crude.
The fragility of an oil-dependent globalised food system is acutely apparent at this particular time, when Russian fossil-fuel energy supplies are threatened.
Writing in 2005, Norman J Church stated:
Vast amounts of oil and gas are used as raw materials and energy in the manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides and as cheap and readily available energy at all stages of food production: from planting, irrigation, feeding and harvesting, through to processing, distribution and packaging.
In addition, fossil fuels are essential in the construction and the repair of equipment and infrastructure needed to facilitate this industry, including farm machinery, processing facilities, storage, ships, trucks and roads.”
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has also affected global fertilizer supply chains, with both countries moving to suspend their fertilizer exports. The major markets for Russian fertilizers include Brazil and the EU and US.
In 2021, Russia was the largest exporter of urea, NPKs, ammonia, urea/ammonium nitrate solution and ammonium nitrate and the third-largest potash exporter. Fertilizer prices for farmers have spiked and could lead to an increase in food costs.
It all indicates that regional and local community-owned food systems based on short(er) food supply chains that can cope with future shocks are required. How we cultivate food also needs to change.
A recent article on the Agricultural and Rural Convention website (ACR2020) states:
What we urgently need now to invest in is a new local and territorial infrastructure for food production and processing which transforms the agro-industrial food system into a resilient decentralized food supply system. The war in Ukraine reveals the extreme vulnerability of food supply, far from the food security of actual food sovereignty.”
The agri-food and global trade system is heavily reliant on synthetic fertilizers and fossil fuels. However, agroecological and regionally resilient approaches would result in less dependency on such commodities.
The 2017 report Towards a Food Revolution: Food Hubs and Cooperatives in the US and Italy offers some pointers for creating sustainable support systems for small food producers and food distribution. These systems would be based on short supply chains and community-supported agriculture.
This involves a policy paradigm shift that prioritises the local over the global: small farms, local markets, renewable on-farm resources, diverse agroecological cropping and food sovereignty.
An approach based on local and regional food self-sufficiency rather than dependency on costly faraway imported supplies and off-farm (proprietary) inputs.
The 2020 paper Reshaping the European Agro-food System and Closing its Nitrogen Cycle says an organic-based, agri-food system could be implemented in Europe that would reinforce the continent’s autonomy, feed the predicted population in 2050 and allow the continent to continue to export cereals to countries which need them for human consumption.
The question is how can this be achieved, especially when influential agribusiness and retail conglomerates regard such an approach as a threat to their business models.
The 2021 report A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045 offers useful insights.
Authored by ETC Group and the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES), the document says grassroots organisations, international NGOs, farmers’ and fishers’ groups, cooperatives and unions need to collaborate more closely to transform financial flows, governance structures and food systems from the ground up.
During times of war, sanctions or environmental disaster, systems of production and consumption often undergo radical transformation. If the past two years have told us anything, it is that transforming food systems is required now more than ever.
Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture and is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. You can read his “mini e-book”, Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Cultivating Resistance, here.
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According to the Neocons war is far more profitable than wheat. Go with the money and enjoy the great reset idiots. Be careful of what you ask for and the people you support in 2022. The sheep are untrainable and we on the other side should become ungovernable. I hope Russia follows through on their gold backed ruble. That ought to put Klaus and the boys in a tizzy for awhile! REAL MONEY? AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH
Quite gruesome pics of dead Ukie-nazis. (Unless they are paid crisis actors.)
Unless Ukraine suddenly has the world’s best crisis actors and some awesome make up artists, I’d say that’s a pile of for real dead people. +1 if you’re in the military surplus biz, “fresh nazi uniforms, only bleached once, may have some holes”
I can’t say if they re real or not. A Ukrainian beauty queen posed for photos at the alleged maternity hospital. The photographs of Ukrainians firing missiles was cut from the and where the Russians took them out. Everyone spoke of the mall that was demolished. They didn’t tell you it was empty and they were firing from that location.
You “can’t say if they’re real or not?”
Give me a break, man.
Wish we had subtitles for these videos so we’d know what they’re saying.
Иazis are bad, mm’kayski.
Kaput иazis, meh, improvemenetz.
Turn the sound off and really look at what they want you to see, yes all those down votes are from me.
Enjoy a video you fucking sheep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Come up with a handle, you little cunt.
I’d say you just gave him his handle.
Maybe ‘No Name Cunning Runt’ has an appropriate anonymous ring a ding ding handleless echo to it…eh KJ/Red?
You fucks being told what to think is real ?
( FUCK YOU Mark) it started with Sandy Hook ( hence the hook) and went from there. Follow your leader( Pastor) you fuck or cuck.
and from a shit stirrer like Stucky who resides in NJ.
It’s insane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gee Cunning…try decaf…
Little “c”.
So let it be written.
So let it be done!!!
Here you go Mark let me feed you some shit so you can talk to your other friends who are even more shit.
No Name …you show up with a blanket insult + no handle = no cred.
Buy a clue clueless.
Where’s the blood you brain damaged imbecile? Didn’t teach you that shit in 3 letter school? I see what Stucky see’s and it’s still shit.
I think similar piles will occur in the USA because the Leftist Fascist have no other stopping point: first they took White male’s Rights, then all Whites and Asians, then our Bill of Rights, then our Right to Work, then the sanity of our children, now they are destroying our food and fuel supplies, and we can see they plan to take away our currency and all the rest of our Freedoms and send us to FEMA Camps for some reason or other. A lot of us would rather take our chances like the Spanish Conservatives did in 1936, and the Soviet anti-communist did in 1989.
I am more than willing to go hungry if; 1) it helps a Ukranian Joo, and 2) it saves even one spotted dick salamander.
Normal people ask, “Why?” Why are Americans still fighting with Russia three decades after the breakup of the soviet Union? Why are Americans sending Troops all over the world? What is the threat?
Real people die. It might be Americans fighting an unexplainable war. It might be those we send our guns to as the participants in our Proxy War.
Americans have been assholes for too long. We need to throw out the politicians and fire the Deep State. We need to read the Constitution and shut down the gubmint programs that are unconstitutional. Then we should be able to pay off our debts in another 100 years.
The answer is ALWAYS the same:
“Follow the money “(and power)
It invariably leads back to the same people….
If they want the answer to that question, they need to go back and listen to Eisenhower’s last speech.
The US foreign policy is dictated by the Military Industrial Complex, and their business is war.
With humanity’s future riding on gaffe spewing puppet Biden, may as well set the Doomsday Clock one minute after midnight.
How does one get rid of parasites? Eradicate it. Period. On the distant chance that enough utilize that Constitution it could right the ship of fools. The other option will be extremely bloody.
As to the debt, I have no dog in that hunt… I have no debt.
Debt is a cruel master!
Tatiana Romanov
Dad grew a garden in the back yard. Farmers know how to grow potatoes and beans—and can food.
Michael Yon – My estimation is Russia is not bluffing on fuel shipping. They may cripple big-mouth no-ass Europe. Putin has been busy working with other buyers — CCP/India, for example. Eventual famine in Europe is a real possibility if this constellation of issues worsens.
Russia says the West has to pay in Rubles or gold for gas and TPTB say no, we will pay in Dollars and Euros. Russia says we will cut our gas off. TPTB are stupider than 5th graders. The BRICS are about one more insult from demanding Rubles, Yuan, Rupees, Pesos, or gold for everything we buy; it is US who is buying stuff by the fleets of tankers and sending back empty ships. We need their stuff; we don’t get to set the price and determine the terms. As an American. I’m embarrassed by the Oligarch’s gross arrogant stupidity and want them fired immediately before they get US into a war, and all of them replaced with new management yesterday.
Wow, like the Vietnam war did not cause a supply chain, food problem? Nor the Korean war, nor other mind-boggling skirmishes?
No, only the Ukraine war can cause mass starvation and used car prices to go way up.
If we could somehow double the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere plants wouldn’t need nearly so much in-ground fertilizer. Contrary to common delusion it would have no significant impact on temperature.