War in Ukraine threatens worldwide food shortage, rise in social and political upheaval; millions more could go hungry

"The war in Ukraine has delivered a shock to global energy markets. Now the planet is facing a deeper crisis: a shortage of food," reports Jack Nicas of The New York Times. The greatest upheaval since World War II "is compounded by major challenges that were already increasing prices and squeezing supplies, including the pandemic, shipping constraints, high energy costs and recent droughts, floods and fires," That could bring more global hunger and social/political upheaval.

"A crucial portion of the world’s wheat, corn and barley is trapped in Russia and Ukraine because of the war, while an even larger portion of the world’s fertilizers is stuck in Russia and Belarus," Nicas reports. "The result is that global food and fertilizer prices are soaring. Since the invasion last month, wheat prices have increased by 21 percent, barley by 33% and some fertilizers by 40%. Ukrainian farms are about to miss critical planting and harvesting seasons. European fertilizer plants are significantly cutting production because of high energy prices. Farmers from Brazil to Texas are cutting back on fertilizer, threatening the size of the next harvests."

The smaller supply of basic commodities will push grocery bills up even higher, and could push food-insecure people over the edge to outright hunger, Nicas writes. In the U.S., where grocery prices were up 8.6% in February over the year before and most pandemic assistance programs have ended, more and more Americans are turning to food banks, Laura Reiley reports for The Washington Post.

"Food-bank officials are reporting growing lines at their distribution centers nationwide. Rates of reported hunger have been increasing since early August, when nearly 8% of respondents said they 'sometimes' or 'often' did not have enough to eat, according to data from the Census Household Pulse Survey," Reiley reports. "In early February, 10% of those polled said their household sometimes doesn’t have enough to eat. That uptick is more significant for households with children, rising to 13%, although off from pandemic peaks." Also in February, 35% of U.S. adults in households with children said they struggled to cover their bills. (On Friday, the U.S. Conference of Mayors pleaded with Congress to extend federal pandemic food aid, currently set to expire in July.)

Worldwide, "After remaining mostly flat for five years, hunger rose by about 18% during the pandemic to between 720 million and 811 million people. Earlier this month, the United Nations said that the war’s impact on the global food market alone could cause an additional 7.6 million to 13.1 million people to go hungry," Nicas reports. "The World Food Program’s costs have already increased by $71 million a month, enough to cut daily rations for 3.8 million people."

If the war ended very soon, Ukraine's agricultural exports would still likely fall by a fifth from 2021, Alistair MacDonald reports for The Wall Street Journal. Damaged land, equipment and infrastructure, along with a scattered populace, will make it difficult for farmers to get back to work right away. But that's the best-case scenario, a Ukrainian agriculture official told MacDonald; the reality will probably be far worse.