In the midst of the crisis in Ukraine, the price of gas recently hit $6.00 per gallon in Seattle, Washington, where I live. That’s a lot of money to have to spend getting from one place to another. But I was raised on a farm, I’ve spent my life working in agriculture, and when I think about the indirect impact of the Ukraine crisis, I focus on the price of something else, something even more fundamental to survival than oil: Food.
Together, Russia and Ukraine account for about one-third of global wheat exports. Meanwhile, Russia and Belarus are leading producers of fertilizer and its key ingredients. As these supplies dry up, the price of food could go up by 20% or more, according to the latest estimates.
I think of my mother, who is 82 and still manages the farm in Zimbabwe that I grew up working on with my brothers and sisters. To continue to earn a living, she’ll have to pay a massive premium for fertilizer; the rising price of oil will make it worse, since the fertilizer she buys has to be trucked inland from port cities. That is capital the vast majority of smallholder farmers simply do not have. In many countries, governments will decide to subsidize wheat and fertilizer, which will keep the costs of those commodities down for now but will force harsh spending cuts in other priority areas. In the worst cases, people will starve. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations recently estimated that the Ukraine crisis would push approximately 10 million people in Africa and Asia into hunger. Even more will be in danger of falling into poverty.
To minimize this catastrophe, the world needs to do a few things immediately. First, provide food relief to all those at risk. Second, encourage governments not to react to rising prices by banning exports and further distorting global food markets. We’ve already seen how zero-sum thinking about vaccines has prolonged the pandemic for everyone. Zero-sum thinking about food isn’t going to work any better. Unfortunately, some countries are already stockpiling wheat and fertilizer at the expense of the neediest people.
But the world’s food crisis did not begin with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and if we think only about short-term responses, we’ve fundamentally misunderstood the problem we face. Before Ukraine, global agriculture was already dealing with increasingly rapid and severe climate change, widespread conflict and mass migration, a locust infestation across the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, and a pandemic. The result was the highest food prices in recorded history.
The Ukraine-related price spikes are just the most recent evidence that the global agricultural system is broken. If it’s fixed, the world’s food system will be more resilient—not only if there is another crisis in the Black Sea region but in the face of a seemingly endless string of punishing externalities.
There is enough food to go around, but it doesn’t go around—at least not reliably. In Africa, half of the population works in agriculture, yet only one country has met its commitments to investing in the sector. As a result, almost a third of African children are chronically undernourished, which means they aren’t getting enough calories or nutrients for their brains and bodies to develop as they should. When I was a boy, Zimbabwe was a regional bread basket; now we routinely suffer grain shortages.
If the system were designed properly, the 500 million families that earn their living farming small plots of land would earn more, they would produce enough food to feed their communities, countries, and regions, and consumers would be able to afford a diverse and healthy diet for everyone in their households.
What would it take to actually build this system, in practical terms? Our partners recently released 10 evidence-based policy recommendations for ending hunger, including researching and developing crops that can withstand severe weather, connecting smallholder farmers to markets so they can buy and sell efficiently, and supporting farmers with more relevant data and information so they can make the best decisions in real time. The data analysis and modeling behind this work is extremely sophisticated. It is possible to build resilience into the system, and this is the work it will take.
Every time I see images from Ukraine, my first thought is sorrow for the people who are suffering there. My second thought is that people outside of Ukraine are going to suffer, too, from the food price crisis that’s coming. My third thought is that the food crisis isn’t coming; it came at least a generation ago. And it won’t end until governments around the world invest in a global agricultural system that meets farmers and consumers’ need for a decent livelihood, basic health and safety, and real opportunity.
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