War In Ukraine Impacting Food Supplies
While the ongoing rise in food prices in the United States is primarily being driven by inflation, the continuing war in Ukraine may soon contribute to a food crisis that will not be confined to the United States and its anemic economy. No event has greater potential for the disruption of orderly economic activity than a major war, especially a war involving belligerents whose economic output includes crucial exports such as food and energy. Already widely acknowledged is the effect that the Russia-Ukraine war is having on global energy supplies, given Russia’s pivotal role in oil and natural gas production. And while Putin’s role in rising gas prices has been exaggerated by a Biden administration eager to shirk responsibility for its own disastrous policy decisions, it cannot be altogether discounted, especially among European nations only recently dependent on Russia for the bulk of their energy needs.
Less well known are the roles of both Russia and Ukraine in global food production, particularly grains. Russia and Ukraine are (or were) among the top five global exporters of corn, barley, and sunflowers, and together account for roughly one-third of the world’s entire grain production. Both nations are also major exporters of cheap fertilizer. As the New York Times’ Jack Nicas observed, “for the global food market, there are few worse countries to be in conflict than Russia and Ukraine.”
Global Ramifications
A large proportion of the food and fertilizer exports from these two nations goes disproportionately to a region of the world already critically vulnerable to food supply disruptions: Africa. For example, Nigeria — Africa’s most populous country and also the world’s fourth-largest importer of wheat — gets one-quarter of its entire supply from Russia and Ukraine. Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, and Cameroon all receive an average of more than 40 percent of their wheat imports from the two warring nations. Even the UN’s World Food Program gets one-half of its entire wheat supply — much of which ends up in needy African nations — from Ukraine alone.
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