Article Highlights:
Global food production is challenged by:
War in Ukraine reducing food supply, particularly grain, to food deficient countries.
Russian sanctions limiting fertilizers to food growing countries.
China’s continuing lockdowns.
Aberrant weather reducing crop yields in countries across the planet.
Food price inflation is on the rise for everyone.
Some warm weather has finally arrived here in Northern Illinois. My beehives came through the winter healthy and I’ve been busy in the yard as well as prepping the garden. We are having a hot spell and the asparagus is practically jumping out of the ground. I just saw a whirlwind run through my orchard, creating a mini tornado of loose apple petals. It is definitely springtime!
It is planting time too, and after decades of gardening, I want to write about that. Before I do though, it might be useful to explore why I see this year as the most important year I’ve seen to grow some food.
There is more going on in the world of food – or should I say, “the food of the world”, than I have ever witnessed. Weather, war, pandemic restrictions, and sanctions are simultaneously challenging global ability to produce and transport food, creating increasing food insecurity.
I think it is easiest to understand our current food situation using graphs, maps, and charts, so let’s take a look at some.
War in Ukraine
The war has greatly limited, although not completely stopped Ukraine’s food exports. A large part of Ukraine’s shipping leaves via its southern border on the Black Sea, then through the Bosporus Straits at Istanbul, and on to African and Asian destinations. It is estimated that 25 million tons of grain are currently stuck in Ukraine and unable to be exported due to infrastructure challenges and blocked Black Sea ports. Just this week, Ukraine’s first grain shipment was made since the war started, although that shipment left from a port in adjacent Romania.
Ukraine is one of the world’s most important food exporting countries as seen in the following chart.
African countries have not joined the sanctions against Russia, but it is likely their grain shipments are affected regardless. Insurance rates for shippers have risen from a normal 0.25% of ship value to 1%-5% of ship value. Shippers are choosing to avoid the Black Sea due to war and risk of hitting sunken ships. Furthermore, dock workers in some areas are refusing to handle any Russian products.
A UN report says more than 1.7 billion people might be at risk of poverty & hunger as a result of disruptions in the food production system caused by Russia’s war against Ukraine.
It will be a while before Ukraine’s exports return to earlier levels, assuming they ever do.
Russia Sanctions
Russia is the largest resource exporting country on the planet. There is a lot of talk in the news about sanctions on Russian oil and natural gas exports, which in itself is a very big deal, but it is not as well known that Russian Federation countries also export a large amount of fertilizer.
As an exporter, Russia is the world’s second largest of nitrogen fertilizers, third largest of phosphate fertilizer, and second largest of potash – the three most commonly used fertilizers. Russia is also the world’s largest exporter of urea fertilizer and the largest exporter of NPK (Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potash) fertilizer, both by a wide margin. On top of that, Belarus is the third largest exporter of potash.
Western sanctions have not been honored by countries of Africa, Central and South America, or by most of Asia – particularly China and India. Theoretically, those countries will still have access to fertilizers (and other resources) from Russia and Belarus, but that depends on Russia’s willingness to export and capability for shipping, which is complicated by the war.
Russia has discussed limiting fertilizer exports to ensure its own population has adequate supplies. A large portion of exports normally leave Russia via the Black Sea. Most nations import some amount of fertilizer, which means global food production is impacted by this situation (with a planting season delay), even if Russia is willing to fully meet demand.
Canada-based Nutrien Ltd., the world’s largest fertilizer company, is projecting fertilizer shortages well beyond 2022. Farmers in Central and South America, China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam are already using less fertilizer. For the Asian countries, this means less rice production. Rice is the primary carbohydrate source for about half the world’s population.
The Ukraine war and subsequent sanctions have put many of the world’s countries in a food pickle, but unfortunately not the kind of pickle you can eat!
Shipping Issues – and other CCP Instigated Shenanigans
In Musings on China, I discussed recent shipping problems in Shanghai. Since then, it sounds like the shipping congestion has stabilized. Other news out of Shanghai is getting increasingly bizarre though.
Some parts of Shanghai have exceeded day 50 of lockdown where people are not even allowed to open their apartment door and are required to get Covid tests daily. Food is only available via delivery and in some areas not available at all on weekends.
I’ve seen photos of apartment complex perimeters fenced off with razor wire topping the fence, and even razor wire blocking the stairwells of apartments. Lot’s of troubling video clips have been coming out of Shanghai over the past month, If interested, check out this video montage of what Shanghai’s lockdown looks like. And just today, I read that the Shanghai government is going to intensify the lockdowns.
Now lockdowns have begun in parts of Beijing, where they are trying to control the virus without the blowback seen in Shanghai. In reality, the virus has now spread around much of the country. I saw a clip online discussing how the CCP is achieving ‘zero-Covid’ in Shanghai by sending everyone testing positive to a quarantine camp outside the city. Once they have all left - viola! The city has zero Covid.
The situation is a bit hard to comprehend, but after spending a lot of time in China, I can believe it. When it comes to controlling its citizens, China makes Western countries look like amateurs. Totalitarianism is on full display.
President Xi is up for ‘reelection’ soon, and apparently, he wants to be tough on Covid to ensure he is ‘reelected’. I don’t really understand why though, because a few years back the CCP changed the constitution to basically make him Dictator-for-Life. The CCP is comprised of three or four infighting factions, so maybe he is feeling threatened, thus these extreme actions.
This China lockdowns are not helping the food shortage. China is the world’s top exporter of phosphate fertilizer. Lockdowns and port congestion may not matter though because China blocked all phosphate exports last October to ensure adequate domestic supply.
I’ve read that the CCP has locked down some provinces to the point that they prevented farmers from planting their crops, which in large part resulted because the farmers were seasonal workers and were prohibited from traveling between provinces. Coupled with transport delays of seeds and other materials, planting has been delayed in the main corn growing area.
The CCP is even reported to have gone as far as removing farmers plowing their fields from their tractors because they were violating lockdowns!
By my tally, the score is currently: Covid – 1, CCP – 0. Something tells me the CCP score is going to stay stuck at 0 but the Covid number is going to go up – a lot. Every other country has accepted that Omicron cannot be stopped. Does the CCP plan to lockdown the country for years?
Since there is not enough going on in the world already, I would be remiss to not discuss everyone’s favorite topic – The Weather.
Weather Challenges
There are a number of troubling weather issues but it is hard to beat the extraordinarily high temperatures in India and Pakistan. Temperature in a few Indian locations has reached as high as 118°F (48°C), the highest in 122 years. While this might be tolerable in an area such as Death Valley, California. where there is near zero humidity, this is a dangerous situation in India because humidity levels are higher and can lead to life threatening conditions.
May is India’s hot month, but this year has gotten hot earlier than normal. Over the past few years, temperatures in India, Iran, and the Arab gulf have gradually risen, reaching intolerable wet bulb values (combination of temperature and humidity.) Last week, high temperatures in Pakistan melted glacial lakes in the Himalayas, resulting in damaging flooding downstream.
India is in the midst of a wheat harvest that has been affected, and in some areas reduced, by this heat wave, prompting the Indian government to consider placing curbs on wheat exports.
A La Nina weather pattern, driven by colder than normal water in the Pacific Ocean, continues to build. Consistent with its historical effect, this is leading to lowered South American soybean crop due to dry and cool conditions (Argentina and Southern Brazil), warmer and dryer conditions in the U.S. Southwest and South Central areas (North and West Texas, Oklahoma, Western Kansas) reducing wheat yields, and cool/wet conditions to the upper Midwest and Great Lakes areas which has delayed corn and soybean planting (delays we have seen here in northern Illinois, although is more pronounced in North Dakota, as evidenced by recent flooding).
Germany is experiencing a drought in its farming areas, damaging sunflower production. Even Antarctica has seen a ‘heatwave’, experiencing 70°F above normal for a short time this March. We don’t raise food on Antarctica (at least not for now), but the point is, these aberrant temperatures and rainfall patterns around the globe do not bode well for stable growing conditions.
Other Issues Challenging Food Supplies
As if those weren’t enough, an avian influenza has spread to parts of the U.S., requiring elimination of millions of infected chickens. Add to that, over the past couple years, there have been more than 20 destroyed food processing facilities, warehouses or animal raising operations. Some people have suspected foul play, and the FBI issued a notice about ransomware attacks on food facilities. After digging into this a bit, while unusual, I do not find these events to be excessive. I do not consider them a threat to our food supply since this is only a fraction of America’s over 34,000 food and beverage processing facilities.
Food Price Inflation
Are we likely to see food shortages here in the U.S.? Probably not, although we may see shortages of a few items from time-to-time. Unlike much of the world, North America has strong food security.
Other parts of the world, especially North Africa and parts of Asia, are in a much more delicate position. Considering the confluence of events emerging upon our food production and distribution systems coupled with rising financial instability, it is increasingly possible we will see starvation in some areas. More troubling perhaps is that some of the conditions I have touched on are worsening over the long term – particularly weather and resource availability.
Shortages drive price inflation, and Russian sanctions have particularly impacted Europe. In Estonia for example, overall yearly inflation has reached 18.8%, with electricity prices rising 50%, natural gas 83%, gasoline 32.5%, diesel 48.6%, potatoes 134%, vegetable oil 57%, cereals and pasta 38%. Ouch!
We are already seeing riots in Peru as well as in Sri Lanka due to food and fuel price inflation, which are largely a result of devalued currency creating a food shortage. Iran, which is a major importer of Russian wheat, has seen the cost of flour soar by around 500 percent, with expectations for it to increase further after the Iranian government ended subsidies for imported wheat on May 1. This is leading to social tensions.
Since food, especially grains, are a global commodity, broad-based shortages will drive prices higher everywhere. While this is an inconvenience in North America, it is devastating in other countries – assuming they can even buy grain.
Americans on average spend about 10% of their income on food. If food prices rise 50%, American’s will need to spend 15% of their income.
In some poorer countries, people spend over 50% of income on food. If prices rise 50%, this becomes 75% of their income – an unsustainable situation. For this reason, food inflation riots are likely to increase.
The Arab Spring protests and riots of 2011 occurred due to food price inflation and resulted in overthrow of some North African governments. That situation was largely driven by dry weather events. The current situation is worse due to being multi-causal and more widespread.
To tie these price increases together – we can see how the cost of a BLT has gone up.
This entire food situation reminds me of the work exchange trip I took in 1994 to a Russian power plant outside of St. Petersburg. This was just a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Russian economy was in a shambles. This was immediately obvious upon landing in St. Petersburgh, a city of about six million people at the time, because we were the only flight in the international airport. Furthermore, there were five or six Russian Aeroflot jets on the tarmac, all of them partially dismantled for parts.
We stayed in the town of about 20,000 people that had been built around the power plant. The communist government had owned the entire town, and it was now owned by the power company. Virtually everyone who lived in that town worked in some way for the state-owned power company. That included power plant workers, gardeners, cooks, drivers, etc.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the communist centralized support system collapsed, and with it the economy. People were unable to pay their electric bills, so the company could not pay employees. Instead, the company ensured every worker had food and lodging.
The took us to the town’s only grocery store. It wasn’t much bigger than my house, and I was shocked to see how little food it contained. I had more preserved food stored at my home than I saw in that store.
I wondered how anyone not working for the power company survived? My question was later answered during a drive around the local area.
Outside the town was an area where the local people had their summer gardens. I saw a large area – perhaps a quarter section of land – covered with individual garden plots. On each plot was a small dacha (hut) where people stayed while tending the garden. It was basically a very big community garden.
I then realized that most people raised a large portion of their own food. That is how Russians were able to survive the Soviet Union’s collapse without massive starvation. This left me wondering how Americans would survive a similar situation, considering how little food raising and preserving knowledge currently exists in our general population.
Final Thoughts
Food is the medium uniting all peoples. I know this from my travels. There is no better avenue through which culture can be shared than through food. We all have taste buds and all can appreciate the sensations of the culinary specialties of another culture.
Sampling the food of a culture is the simplest, and most enjoyable pathway for me to experience that culture. It is the commonality no one can deny.
Traditional foods arose because they relied upon local ingredients, but also because they were plentiful and affordable. I know that food is directly related to culture. To a great extent, language is built upon the eating experience.
Dining in America offers perhaps the greatest example of this cultural openness because nearly every cuisine in the world is available here. Not only that, but these restaurants are often prized and frequented. They provide an avenue for learning more of other cultures as they provide contact between the proprietors and the public. It is one of the reasons racism in the U.S. is actually much less than in most other countries, despite what we hear in the media.
Societies are driven by their need for cohesion, whether or not that is recognized. One of the most effective paths to achieving cohesion is through shared food practices and offerings.
Food is ritualized by a culture. These rituals, along with language, are the common thread uniting a culture. I have seen how this ties together nations, as well as groups inside nations, which will compete with one another through their culinary favorites. This represents the best of human competition for it is giving and creative, rather than demeaning to the ‘loser’ or destructive, as in the case of fighting, be the fight verbal, financial, or military.
If a society’s food infrastructure collapses, great strains are placed on the cohesion of that culture or nation, on top of the feeling of hunger. To not be able to share a favorite prepared food because of food shortages leads to a feeling of defeat culturally. Of course, economics are always a factor in these situations. The combination of hunger, inflation, and perceived threats to culture sow the seeds of revolution.
We are at a time when nations must recognize their common needs. Collapse of any nation due to food shortage or war only serves to drag down its neighbors, and eventually any nations connected via trade or via social connections such as family members. The entirety of humanity suffers in these conditions.
If it were up to me, instead of providing Ukraine war materials, we would be providing discounted grains to grain-short nations since I think more lives are at risk from future starvation than the current war.
I can’t solve these global problems, but I can plant my garden – and that is what I plan to talk about next.
Thanks Tim. I hope that enough of us wake up to this situation that we will reach out to help those at-risk countries. The implication of not doing so is even greater global unrest.
Hey Mark, thank you for your research and data. Been traveling to Idaho and back for almost 7 weeks so haven't got around to reading this till today. I'll share this on our FB PM group today but please consider sharing future Apples to Apples writings with the group.