Food is just as vital as oil to the national security

While Putin’s war in Ukraine is delivering shocks to the energy market and driving up fertiliser prices, the
bigger problem has become the soaring cost of wheat. Russia is steering the world toward an increasingly severe food security crisis — compounding the shortages already caused by the pandemic and climate change.
More than 70% of Ukraine is prime agricultural land that produces a major share of the world’s wheat, as well as its corn, barley, rye, sunflower oil and potatoes. Ukraine’s crop exports to the European Union, China, India and throughout Northern Africa and Middle East are plummeting as Russian forces paralyse Ukrainian ports. They could soon cease altogether. Meanwhile, heavy Western sanctions are disrupting the flow of crop exports from Russia, the world’s top wheat producer.
Food security organisations are already hard pressed to deal with spreading hunger. Expanding shortages “will be hell on earth,” the United Nations World Food Program director David Beasley predicted. The threat is greatest in countries already teetering on the edge of famine, and in those that rely heavily on Ukrainian and Russian imports. Beasley said his organisation will “have no choice but to take food from the hungry to feed the starving,” and unless more funding pours in immediately, “we risk not even being able to feed the starving.”
The Ukraine war is teaching international leaders a lesson they should have learned already: Long-term agricultural strategy must be built into national security plans. That means starting now to invest in more sustainable farming practices, climate-resilient crops and new growing technologies, as well as agile supply chains that can pivot around disruptions when needed. Food security must also become a central
focus of international trade agreements.
Hunger fuels civil unrest and a vicious cycle of disruptions. It adds burdens, distractions and enormous costs to already strained governments as they scramble to import food at higher prices. Eventually, it can lead to mass exodus: hungry civilians fleeing their homeland in search of food.
For millennia, robust food systems have conferred political power. Civilisations from the Mayans of Mesoamerica to the Vikings of Scandinavia rose as their food supplies flourished and fell as they declined. Even today, the nations with the least-reliable food supplies tend to have the least-diverse economies and the most conflict-prone governments. In 2012, hunger helped foment the Arab Spring after droughts crippled wheat fields in Russia and the U.S., causing grain prices to spike worldwide. Food riots broke out in dozens of cities worldwide.
That global food crisis a decade ago forced Group of Eight nations to begin to focus on food security. They pledged significant funding for food relief. The Obama administration, for its part, set up Feed the Future, a program that deployed USAID and other agencies in targeted countries to help improve access to food. These were important efforts — but not enough.
Today, both wealthy and developing nations need to double down on this issue. Wheat prices already are at the levels they were in the 2008 food crisis — and climbing. “We can only imagine how much more devastating this is going to get,” said Catherine Bertini, a food security expert with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former director of UN’s World Food Program. “The risk we’re facing is unprecedented.”
The Ukraine invasion has three tiers of negative influence on food security: first, on the people of Ukraine and Russia who are experiencing supply disruptions; second, on countries relying heavily on their exports; and third, on broader populations that already are feeling the shock of higher food prices. Worldwide today, 283 million people are acutely food insecure and 45 million are on the edge of famine. Famine-stricken countries such as Yemen stand to suffer most from dwindling Ukranian food exports, but also vulnerable are Egypt, Turkey and Bangladesh, which import billions of dollars of Ukrainian wheat annually.
Many other nations already struggling with food supplies depend on Ukrainian exports. Take Kenya, for instance: It derives 34% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, and 70% of its population lacks money for food. Or Morocco: 31% of its wheat comes from Russia and Ukraine, and 56% of its population can’t afford a stable food supply. No less than half of the wheat purchased by the United Nations for food assistance worldwide comes from Ukraine.
But no country is insulated from food disruptions going forward — including and especially the United States. With all the calls we’ve been hearing for greater energy independence, few have fretted over the fact that while the US exports about $150 billion annually in food products, it imports nearly as much — about $145 billion.
Why isn’t food security a key topic at major global conferences? It was barely discussed last year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, nor was it a priority at the COP 26 climate conference or at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. The European Union, World Trade Organization and other international trade groups must prioritise stable
food-trade relationships — especially for the poorest and most food-vulnerable countries.
Even if Russia’s war against Ukraine is resolved soon and their exports continue to flow, climate impacts on food production and supply chain disruptions will become increasingly severe.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released, hotter, dryer and more volatile growing conditions are already hobbling food systems globally, and as much as 30 percent of the world’s currently productive farm and pastureland will no longer support food production by the end of this century, if current trends continue.
Nations should steer more money to organizations like the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center that are advancing crucial research on how to grow more resilient wheat and maize crops in regions that are becoming steadily less arable. This isn’t just a problem of the future, though — countries and communities that most urgently address their food supply challenges will be the ones best equipped to survive disruptions and thrive economically now.

—Bloomberg

Amanda Little is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a professor of journalism and science writing at Vanderbilt University, and the author of “The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World”