Russia’s war in Ukraine will not only bring devastation and death to Ukrainians and Russians, but also “promises acute food crisis and rising poverty to h whole world”, says an article Aleksey Kalmykov posted on the website of BBC’s Russian Service on April 18.
Does the World Face Hunger because of the War in Russia with Ukraine?, in particular, notes that poor countries that are friendly to Russia will suffer disproportionately more than the West.
Before the war, Russia and Ukraine were major food seller and occupied leading positions in the grain and vegetable oil markets. Russia is also the largest seller of oil, petroleum products and fertilizers, as well as well as the raw materials for them – natural gas.
Now, those supplies are being disrupted as food is scarce in Ukraine and Ukraine’s grain ports are themselves blocked by Russian fleets. Further it will only get worse.
All this is very inconvenient, especially for poor countries, where people spend most of their household budget on food. The world has barely recovered from COVID and last year's drought, so food prices were breaking records even without a war, according to the article.
Now they [food prices] have soared to peaks never seen in 32 years of observation. In March alone, food prices reportedly rose 13 percent, and in a year to March [food prices rose] а third.
it’s not over yet; the UN believes that they will rise at least 8 percent, and even 22%.
Because of the war prices for fuel for agricultural machine, cargo shipments by sea and y land, fertilizers and storage rise. There is not enough grain for both people and livestock, and therefore, prices for meat and other foodstuffs are rising, the article says.
Is the planet facing hunger? No, it's not a threat.
Experts from Bruegel (European think tank specializing in economics) believe that even in the worst scenario there will be enough food in the world to feed the entire population of the planet.
Among Russia’s neighbors, all countries that bought food and energy from it will suffer, but those countries, whose nationals more often come to Russia to work, will suffer even more as flows of migrant workers to Russia and remittances from them to their families will decrease.
In Tajikistan, for example, prices for food goods have increased by between 7 and 15 percent since the Ukraine war began.
