ASPHER Statement: 5 + 5 + 5 Points for Improving Food Security in the Context of the Russia-Ukraine War. An Opportunity Arising From the Disaster?

Abstract

The situation triggered by the war initiated by Russia in Ukraine, in addition to the widely known impacts that it has directly on the affected populations, has consequences that affect to almost the entire world population. The effects are verified either through increases in the reference prices of commodities, or by occasional ruptures in the supply chains, all of which contribute to the worsening of the economic and social conditions of most of the people. One of the sectors with predictably the greatest impact is food, through multiple mechanisms that end up having the same end result: the worsening of the quantity of food produced on the planet and potentially the decrease of diets quality. Russia and Ukraine are two of the biggest food exporters at a worldwide level, as illustrated by the WPF [1], accounting for 14% of world exports of maize, 18% of wheat and 40% of sunflower. The immediate consequence of the war was the rise in the prices of essential products, both for human and animal food, with historic high values being registered. There have also been financial speculative phenomena with food commodities, which amplifies the phenomenon of price elasticities [2–5]. Several countries depend on a large scale on imports from these countries at war, especially those in African and in the Near East [6, 7]. Therefore, there are strong reasons to believe that in addition to potential food shortages in the war zone, there may be a worsening of the food condition in the near future in regions where it was already fragile or perilous. Even for countries with sufficient economic conditions to continue to obtain supplies at rising prices of food raw materials, it must be considered that many vulnerable groups already faced difficulties before the war in maintaining a sufficient, healthy and balanced diet. In addition to the above-mentioned situation, Russia is the world’s largest exporter of fertilizers [8–12], particularly in the supply chain to Western Europe, a condition that has now been interrupted by countersanctions [13, 14] to the country. Given that it is not a type of product that can be easily found elsewhere and as it is directly indexed to energy prices, which are also rising, it is expected that in this agricultural year producers will find less availability of fertilizers on the market and those that are available are sold at very high prices. This also leads in the long term to a decrease in agricultural production outside the conflict zone. The months of March and April are critical for the volume and quality of European crops and plantations when many sowings are fertilized. The failure at this point ends up having repercussions Approved by: Sarah Mantwill, University of Lucerne, Switzerland