The war in Ukraine produced many global wave effects, but perhaps not as painful as the impact on world food supplies. Ukraine and Russia are among the world’s largest producers of wheat, maize and potatoes, and the war has cut supplies from these two countries off to world markets for most of this year.
Besides the here and now political solution, what can be done to grow more food and distribute it more equitably? As part of the Global Reboot podcast, I met Ertharin Cousin, former head of the World Food Program. Below is an abbreviated and edited transcript of our chat. For a complete interview, listen to Global Reboot wherever you get your podcasts.
Foreign policy: Let’s start with the war in Ukraine. Of course, the world has already had a food problem, exacerbated by the pandemic, inflation and many other things. But then comes this full-scale interstate conflict right in the middle of one of the world’s largest agricultural centers. How much has the war hurt food supplies this year?
The war in Ukraine produced many global wave effects, but perhaps not as painful as the impact on world food supplies. Ukraine and Russia are among the world’s largest producers of wheat, maize and potatoes, and the war has cut supplies from these two countries off to world markets for most of this year.
Besides the here and now political solution, what can be done to grow more food and distribute it more equitably? As part of the Global Reboot podcast, I met Ertharin Cousin, former head of the World Food Program. Below is a condensed and edited transcript of our chat. For a complete interview, listen to Global Reboot wherever you get your podcasts.
Foreign policy: Let’s start with the war in Ukraine. Of course, the world has already had a food problem, exacerbated by the pandemic, inflation and more. But then comes this full-scale interstate conflict right in the middle of one of the world’s largest agricultural centers. How much has the war hurt food supplies this year?
Cousin Ertharin: We must remember that approximately 25 to 30 percent, depending on the year, of the wheat crop in the global food system is produced jointly by Russia and Ukraine. And more than 50 percent of essential oils, in particular sunflower oil, come from Russia. And then we have some countries like Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, some Horn of Africa like Somalia, which are direct net importers of goods from Ukraine. And now these goods are not moving.
But we are also in a situation where, due to high oil prices, food transport from different parts of the world is quite high. So even if you have countries like India that significantly increase the amount of commodities they put into the world food system, these twin factors of high wheat price and high oil price create commodities, some say as much as 23%. higher than that time last year.
FP: And can it be said that it was already a particularly bad time? Or have there been other moments in recent history, such as 2008, when you saw similar actual supply constraints?
EC: There are similar problems between the 2008 high food price crisis and the situation we face today.
But what makes this year even more difficult than 2008 is that we are recovering from the COVID pandemic. We have seen that supply chains have been significantly weakened. In other words, the prices were already high.
And many of the net importing countries that were able to subsidize high food prices in 2008 are now completely cashless as they invested in a health response to COVID.
FP: And to that add the fact that fertilizer was suddenly hit by the war in Ukraine.
EC: You’re absolutely right. But even before the conflict in Ukraine, the international fertilizer community warned the farming community that due to a shortage of key commodities on the horizon, there was a shortage of fertilizers and that we could expect higher fertilizer costs. And then, with the war in Ukraine, the challenge is that about 10 to 13 percent of the fertilizer is produced in Russia.
For example, in March 2022, a key ingredient in Black Sea fertilizers increased from $ 350 / tonne to about $ 900 / tonne.
And why does it matter? This matters because nearly half of the food produced in the world today, especially the food produced by 500 million smallholders, about 50 percent is based on fertilizers. What we do know is that every 1% drop in fertilizer reduces the availability of food for up to 30 million people.
FP: And this is a real example from the last few years in Sri Lanka where the Gotabaya Rajapaks government started not importing good quality fertilizer anymore and said, “We will turn to organic farming.” This in turn led to huge drops in profitability, which of course led to a point where earlier this year there were mass protests, soaring food prices, rampant inflation and then, of course, a government in trouble.
EC: Exactly. But I don’t want it to be about whether we should have chemicals or organic farming – we need a diversified farming system. What we need to do is provide the increased resources that both small and large farmers need to increase production.
FP: Is there just too many mouths to feed all over the world?
EC: If we embrace science and innovation, we can feed everyone on this planet.
In many countries where they currently produce too little due to a lack of access to seeds and tools, as we have already mentioned, they also lack infrastructure. As a result, about 40 percent. what is being produced is actually lost before it reaches consumers due to lack of access to proper roads, lack of access to warehouses, lack of access to refrigeration. So we produce less food and then lose 40 percent of what has been produced.
FP: Okay, so how can we focus on improving systems, making them more resilient, improving supply chains and doing all of this while still producing more?
EC: First of all, we need to ensure that in places where people cannot feed themselves in times of conflict, we have a humanitarian system that is able to meet the needs of these populations.
As a global community, we must create the policies that are necessary to ensure that we have a properly functioning agricultural system at both global, national and local levels. The idea is that countries do not impose any tariffs or export barriers that would make food unavailable or unattainable.
And then we need to ensure that we have enforcement tools at local level that will ensure that farmers have access to tools, including seeds, to protect crops, and also to the necessary water. In many places, the lack of access to irrigation or the lack of access to water storage systems for adequate food production is due to the lack of systems.
We also need a partnership. For all of these systems to work, community-based public-private partnerships are needed to adequately share information and resources to make these systems most productive.
We need the private sector to invest in a different way. Too often we see private sector investment in new seeds, new tools, new production capacity reappear for these wealthy farmers. New food items are available online for affluent consumers. But we do not see the investments that are needed to support the 500 million smallholders that I have talked about, although that too is an opportunity not only to make an impact, but also to obtain a significant financial return.
FP: How do we finance these policy recommendations?
EC: The answer is difficult. When there is a humanitarian crisis, we see people wanting their governments to take action to meet the emergency needs. The outflow of support for the humanitarian challenges in Ukraine is quite unprecedented – and many will argue because these are European countries, not African or Middle Eastern countries. Governments provide financial resources to support the humanitarian aid we need. And then what? And even if what we call the “CNN effect” results in an outpouring of generosity from individuals and governments, that generosity never lasts as long as a crisis.
EC: For example, today in Yemen, where in the first days of what is now a six-year conflict, a significant contribution was made to Yemen. Today, the WFP is forced to cut rations in half, even though the population in acute hunger crisis grows, not shrinking, as the family’s ability to feed itself worsens, not improves, the longer the conflict continues.
And when it comes to development, it’s even more difficult. The entire global community has pledged $ 100 billion annually to meet the needs of developing countries to adapt and mitigate climate change under the Paris Agreement. This commitment has not yet been met.
So countries are expected to start making the changes necessary for adaptation as the climate crisis has already begun. The short rains are not coming and the long rains are now short. We are seeing an unprecedented heatwave in India. In the Horn of Africa, we see plagues of locusts and other insects – and this is directly related to the growth of the climate.
Thus, the most vulnerable people farm some of the world’s most climate-sensitive land. And so, when we don’t invest in drought-tolerant seeds, the kind of precision farming that is necessary for the seeds to need less water, so when the rains don’t come, we can still produce at the highest level. These financial investments are not made. As a result, we set ourselves up for even more challenges.
The last thing I would say is that in a situation like today, when we see an impending crisis of high food prices, we are not doing any pre-emptive humanitarian action to invest in the tools that will deliver this year from now when the harvest is not available. because the harvest was not available from Ukraine, that farmers produced more in local communities, this work is not happening because there is no investment.
FP: I guess I hope you’re saying that we don’t really have a demand problem. We have a delivery problem. Is this hope widely shared in the community of people who do what you do?
EC: Absolutely. It is impossible to do this job every day without hope. But we realize that this hope is only valid when it is linked to the public will.
