Food Prices

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has imperiled global food security—creating suffering within Ukraine and displacing millions, while disrupting agricultural production and trade from one of the world's major exporting regions. The latter threatens to drive rising food prices still higher and create scarcity, especially for regions most dependent on exports from Russia and Ukraine—particularly the Middle East and North Africa.

The unfolding crisis in Ukraine has roiled commodity markets and threatens global food security. Ongoing fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors have already driven up food prices. Poor harvests in South America, strong global demand, and supply chain issues have reduced grain and oilseed inventories and driven prices to their highest levels since 2011-2013.

Prevalence of hunger and food insecurity have been on the rise in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) in recent years after a long period of decline. In 2020, an estimated one in five people in the region faced hunger, more than double the proportion of any other region worldwide. The period 2019-2020 in SSA saw the strongest increase in annual undernourishment ever recorded. In 2020, estimated prevalence of undernourishment ranged from 10.1 percent in southern Africa to 31.8 percent in Central Africa.

In 2018, African swine fever (ASF), a deadly hemorrhagic disease found in pigs, was reported for the first time in China. By mid-2019, the disease had infected hundreds of millions of pigs—anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of the country’s swine population. Millions of pigs were culled in an effort to slow the spread of the disease, resulting in a drastic reduction in the volume of Chinese pork produced.

Throughout the Sahel region of West Africa, the majority of crops and livestock are produced during one main rainy season. Any disruptions to this season—like those caused, for example, by climate change-induced drought—can have significant negative impacts on incomes, food availability, and food security for both producers and consumers. A new article in Global Food Security  examines these impacts at the household level in Senegal.