Recipe for food crises: war, Covid, and climate change

The UN warns of multiple, looming food crises. These, it says, are driven by conflict, climate shocks, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and massive public debt burdens - exacerbated by the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine which has pushed food and fuel prices to accelerate in many nations across the globe. So how does this all fit together?

From bread basket to hunger hotspot

Ukraine is a food bowl - coined the bread basket of Europe by some -  a fact little appreciated by those outside of Eastern Europe until the war began and food prices soared: Crop production from Ukraine stems from its holding of 25% of the world’s ‘black soil’ productive land for agriculture and horticulture. The world’s largest sunflower seed producer, and in the top ten for corn, barley, rapeseed, wheat and soybeans. Frighteningly, it’s gone from a ‘bread basket’ to a ‘hunger hotspot’ in six brutal months. Ukraine wheat production is about the same as Australia. 

The production of grains from Ukraine is enough to feed a startling 400 million people and until the war, was exported out of its seven Black Sea ports. To put the scale of this in perspective, the WFP says the eight months before the conflict began, close to 51 million metric tons of grain transited through those ports.

Many are greatly affected by the silos of grain blocked from leaving port in the south of Ukraine: those that would directly be purchasing the grain; and the rest of the world that is seeing it drive up prices of food. It’s those in countries reliant on wheat imports, the 44 million people marching towards starvation as a result, that are hit hardest the World Food Programme reports. 

This is on top of the underlying challenges these countries already face. Sudan, for example, relies on Russia and Ukraine for 70% of its wheat and now its own food production in the country is under threat with severe flooding brought on by climate change damaging its own crops. Hunger hotspots on highest alert are currently Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia (category 5 in the phase descriptions found in the image below). These countries all have some populations identified or projected to experience starvation or death. ‘Hunger hotspots’ have the potential for acute food insecurity to increase during the outlook period June-September 2022. Ironically as millions of tonnes sit locked up in silos in its ports, Ukraine itself now joins the confronting list of ‘hot spot’ countries experiencing food insecurity, which makes for sobering reading if you want to put the world food crisis into perspective. 

Phases of acute food insecurity

Source: From Hunger Hotspots FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity: June to September 2022 Outlook

This image is of a table which is available also online

Hot air: Fertiliser made from natural gas 

It’s not only food exports hit by the war that are leading to suffering. The fragility of the global food system is laid bare by the current war in Ukraine and the global response which to date, six months in, has largely been around economic sanctions on Russia for its invasion. We’ve talked about grain in the Ukraine, but Russia accounts for large amounts of fertiliser ingredients: 23% of ammonia, 14% of urea, 21 % of potash and 10 % of processed phosphate exports. In 2021 Russia accounted for nearly a fifth of global fertisiler supply. It also supplies a large amount of natural gas, a fuel used to make synthetic fertilisers. There are restrictions on exports from Russia, sanctions imposed by many countries in response to its attack on Ukraine. There are therefore shortages of supply of the primary ingredients for synthetic fertiliser. Domestically, Russia’s farmers are now under a quota system for their own fertiliser use to ensure supply doesn’t run out and raise their own crop production costs. Fertiliser is predicted to take up to 50% of farmer budgets in the US this year, corn most affected as it uses the most. Food inflation costs will increase. Consumers will face higher prices for food as a result. Again, we’re global and part of the global supply chain. 

Our reliance on synthetically made fertiliser for large scale industrial agriculture is well documented. In these times when we see disruption (war, sanctions, food crises) the conversation needs to shift to alternatives. Farming systems not reliant on synthetic fertilisers will likely to continue business as usual through this. There is also a proliferation of alternatives to synthetic fertilisers from insects to microbes produced at scale: the ‘alternative fertiliser’ market is booming. Globally, there are 154 startups working on smarter, tech-enabled fertiliser production, with a combined enterprise value of $3.0 billion US. Year on year since 2015 this has been growing. This is nothing in comparison to the global conventional fertiliser production that utilises natural gas in its processes but it is a trend to be aware of. We will see growth in ‘alternatives’ to the conventional norm continue as prices rise.

It’s all rising 

This part is challenging because it hits close to home: here we feel the rising cost of food, it’s now under media and political spotlight, and we all can relate. But it does pay to zoom out and recognise where we sit in this global food puzzle, of which we hold a relatively small piece. We are exporters of high quality, nutrient dense food — mainly meat, vegetables and fruit — and importers of grains, processed products, and generally speaking lower nutrient foods like sugars. We are not exempt from global trends and nor will we ever be. Despite being geographically an island we are completely dependent on global trade and inextricably linked to the global food system as a result. So, we are also feeling these effects from the war in Ukraine, climate change, and Covid-19.

Keeping in mind that this is not a New Zealand only problem, is important when we are swamped by national media stories on this. Of course it is still a problem in our country; but it pays to remember that it is a global problem and we are part of that global world.  

The Aotearoa New Zealand context

We’re in turbulent times which show how interconnected and reliant we are on the global food system. Being a resilient food system to withstand these shocks and continue to feed our people needs to be a priority. I frequently write and speak on this topic. It is a bigger conversation that is still in the nascent stages in Aotearoa: frankly it is still ad hoc and disparate here. Two signs that as a country we are beginning to see the food system in its entirety and begin to address it as such at a national level, first come from the work that the public-private think tank Aotearoa Circle is doing on the Mana Kai Initiative, and secondly the UN Food System Summit Dialogues that MPI ran in 2021 that took a food systems approach at a central government level (and Spira facilitated). 

Both of these are far from the ‘answer’ but are indicative that there is a whiff of change floating in the top-down air, where in fact there needs to be a hurricane force driving the change.

Fortunately there are many grassroots and community led food initiatives that are in fact taking a food systems approach to their work, particularly our local government and regional public health providers who have a food systems approach at the heart of some of their work. We see examples of this in some of the Ministry of Health, Healthy Families providers across the country. These must continue and build the momentum, so we get the winds of change we need.

Other organisations play an important role in this, consumer advocacy groups, member organisations and industry groups all need to rise to this challenge. One area where there is good momentum is in strengthening our national grain economy. EAT New Zealand and the Foundation for Arable Research are driving work here for a local grain economy for Aotearoa, New Zealand. Ironically it’s easier logistically, and more affordable, for us to have grain from Australia come into our port in Auckland than it is to schlep the grain from the South Island where it’s mostly grown due to the transportation hurdles along the way (including having to cross the Cook Straight on a ferry). This work is increasingly more important and needs to be ramped up for a resilient national food system. 

It’s not only grains, the war in the Ukraine simply highlights that commodity. On the flip side, we’re reliant as a nation on exporting dairy, for example, which is in turn reliant on synthetic fertiliser inputs and also is an example of holding all our eggs in one basket, instead of having a resilient set of different land use practices to then export. I know, that’s different from how trade works (in the oversimplified scenario where Country A is a specialist in producing X; and then can import Y from Country B that is a specialist in producing Y; and so on) but trade was never designed with resilience in mind, not the sort of resilience we now need in 2022: pandemics, wars, climate change.

Our strength in Aotearoa as a diverse nation is that we do have the climate, soils, and low population to actually change and produce more for ourselves; feeding our own people first as well as exporting our top quality food. As we gather together to share food and celebrate Matariki, reflect on the year that is passed and think about what is coming, this should be food for thought. We do after all, live in a world where there is enough available to go around; yet it does not. 

Emily King

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