A major global food shortage is looming. Director-General Qu Donyu of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) presented Securing Food Security in Times of Crisis at the Meeting of the G7 Ministers of Agriculture.
The FAO’s Food Price Index in March reached 160 points – the highest since its inception in 1990! The report notes that Russia and Ukraine are “important players in global commodity markets” particularly wheat, maize and oilseed. And this uncertainty comes on top of “already high prices driven by robust demand and high input costs as a result of COVID-19 recovery.”
A number of countries, including Turkey and Egypt, Sub-Saharan African countries like Eritrea, Somalia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Congo and Namibia, will be highly impacted by the shortfalls in wheat from Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The food crises in Yemen and Ethiopia in particular would likewise suffer a blow.