Food as the “silent weapon”: Russia’s gains and Ukraine’s losses
2024
Welsh, Caitlin | Glauber, Joseph W.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has caused the greatest military-related disruption to global agricultural markets in at least a century. Ukraine’s agricultural sector has been a major front in Russia’s war since February 2022, and the primary purpose of Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure is likely to undercut a main source of Ukraine’s income. Ukraine’s GDP contracted by more than 29 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, and the value of agriculture as a proportion of Ukraine’s GDP was 39 percent lower in 2022 than 2021. The global disruptions to the agricultural market due to Ukraine’s diminished production and exports have been stark: world food prices reached all-time nominal highs in March 2022, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization Food Price Index. In 2022, 258 million people suffered from acute food insecurity, an all-time high, according to the Global Report on Food Crises. At the same time, the cost of addressing these challenges also soared due to concurrent shocks in the global energy and fertilizer markets brought on by Russia’s war. For example, the cost of the delivery of humanitarian assistance also peaked due to the increased cost of food and fuel for operations. At the same time, for countries hoping to address domestic food insecurity with domestic agricultural production, the increased cost of fertilizer became a limiting factor. Likewise, countries dealing with the high price of food imports, high prices of agricultural inputs, and high levels of food insecurity also had less fiscal space for social programs following the Covid-19 pandemic, which drained national budgets.
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