Ukraine War Triggering Global Food Crisis, Possible Rise in ‘Chronically Hungry People’

An agricultural worker drives a tractor spreading fertilizers to a field of winter wheat near the village of Husachivka in Kiev region, Ukraine April 17, 2020. Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

Russia’s war against Ukraine and the resulting sanctions are pushing the world into a food crisis, according to fertilizer and coal billionaire Andrei Melnichenko.

The war “has already led to soaring prices in fertilizers which are no longer affordable to farmers,” Melnichenko, the founder of EuroChem, one of Russia’s biggest fertilizer producers, told Reuters. “Now it will lead to even higher food inflation in Europe, and likely food shortages in the world’s poorest countries.”

Russia, which accounts for 13 percent of global fertilizer output, is the largest exporter of urea and second in potash exports. It’s also a major producer of fertilizers containing nitrogen and phosphate.

Soaring prices of natural gas, a key component of nitrogen-based fertilizers, were already pushing up product prices. With the West placing sanctions on Russia for its military incursion into Ukraine, fertilizer supply from Moscow could be severely disrupted. Higher prices would add to the cost of food production, driving up prices globally.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on March 10 that if the West created impediments for Russian fertilizer exports, food prices would soar around the world.

In Ukraine, a leading agricultural nation, farmers are entering a crucial time when input factors such as seeds, water, and fertilizers will determine the yield of the upcoming harvest. Without fertilizers, crop production could be halved by the next harvest, Yara International, a major fertilizer producer, warned in a March 1 statement.

Countries that are the weakest financially are poised to be hardest hit in the event of a severe food supply disruption. At least 50 nations depend on Ukraine and Russia for 30 percent or more of their wheat supply.

“My greatest fear is that the conflict continues–then we will have a situation of significant levels of food price rises, in poor countries that were already in an extremely weak financial situation owing to COVID-19. The number of chronically hungry people will grow significantly, if that is the case,” Maximo Torero, chief economist at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told The Guardian.

The Russia–Ukraine crisis might affect billions of people around the world who depend on subsistence farming, Manish Raizada, a professor in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, a public research university in Canada, told Fox News.

When natural gas or oil prices rise, the price of nitrogen fertilizer rises as well, he pointed out, adding that the last time this occurred was around 2008, when 150 million people were pushed into chronic malnutrition.

“I really fear that’s happening right now,” Raizada said.

The crisis in Ukraine could push up prices of international food and feed by 8 to 22 percent above their “already elevated levels,” a recent FAO report (pdf) stated.

If the conflict results in reduced exports from Russia and Ukraine beyond the 2022-23 season, and crude oil prices remain at high levels, it could create a “considerable supply gap” in global sunflower seed and grain markets, the organization warned.