Opinion: No quick fixes for rising global food insecurity

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has issued a dire warning about the deteriorating state of food security for the people remaining under siege in Ukraine. 

The alert issued in late March speaks to rising uncertainty about the ability of farmers in that country to harvest winter wheat crops already planted, undertake spring sowing and sustain livestock production. Already there is evidence of food shortages in many of the surveyed regions. 

But the impact of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, which is unusual in that it affects two of the world’s largest exporters of food and feed grains, reaches far beyond its borders. 

Just as the pandemic increased global food insecurity by pushing millions of people back below the poverty line, this conflict is severing food supply chains and driving up costs exponentially. 

A newly released Canadian Agricultural Policy Institute report points out that the stakes are even higher; nothing is more politically destabilizing than the sudden onset of hunger. 

“Hunger in less developed countries readily leads to social unrest, bread riots and revolutions,” the CAPI report says. “The terrible irony is that the food security issues — already in existence but further sparked by the Ukrainian invasion — could spark further secondary conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere.”

It’s becoming more apparent that this unfolding disaster has joined the global pandemic as a defining moment in modern human history. The world is staring at serious grain supply shocks for which there is no easy remedy. 

The path to increased production elsewhere to make up for what is being lost is fraught with complications. It takes time to push into production undeveloped land or land that has been idled (usually because it’s environmentally fragile or not very productive).

Meanwhile, global carryover stocks of grain have been shrinking in recent years and what does exist may not be available to the market. China holds 50 per cent of the carryover wheat and 70 per cent of the corn. When it comes to a nation protecting its interests, it’s unlikely this grain will be for sale at any price. 

This new era will affect all of us to varying degrees, ranging from those inconvenienced by higher food prices to those who will simply go without. As consumers, we need to remember that the food we waste also wastes all the resources that have gone into making it. 

Farmers, meanwhile, have some bigger choices to make — mainly about what not to do. 

The attention on global supply shortages is focused on cereals used for food and feed. Yet early estimates aren’t pointing to a dramatic shift in seeding intentions. Nor should they. 

Farmers’ decisions should be driven by rotational issues, the availability of production inputs and market signals. 

It is in their own best interests as well as the globe’s to continue to refine their production decisions around efficiency and sustainable use of resources. However, it would be a mistake to buy into the mythology that farmers need to pull out all the stops and rip out every last tree row to “feed the world.” 

That rhetoric places all the burden on productivity when, as the current situation exposes, it’s much more complicated than that. 

Internationally, Canada needs to up its game — not just as a reliable commercial supplier — but in using food as an instrument of peace. 

In the grand scheme of things, all these gestures may seem small. But in a world with big problems, never underestimate the power of a lot of little choices.