Due to increased energy prices, supply chain disruptions and bad weather

Rising food prices threaten the world's poor... and an expert warns: "We are approaching a global food crisis"

Food prices have risen dramatically worldwide, due to disruptions in the global supply chain, bad weather conditions, and high energy prices, which impose a heavy burden on the world's poor and threaten to fuel social unrest.

Farmers' Challenges

The price increases for items as diverse as cereals, vegetable oils, butter, pasta, beef and coffee come at a time when the world's farmers are facing a host of challenges, including droughts, ice storms destroying crops, rising fertilizer and fuel prices, and labor shortages due to The COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain disruptions that make it difficult to get products to market.

The FAO index showed that food prices rose in January 2022 to their highest level since 2011. Also, the prices of meat, dairy products and grains have tended to rise since December 2021, while oil prices reached their highest level since 1990.

food crisis

The New York Times quoted a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Maurice Obstfeld, as saying that higher food prices would weaken the level of income in poor countries, especially in some parts of Latin America and Africa, as they spend up to 50% or 60% of their income is on food.

He pointed out that it is not an exaggeration to say that the world is approaching a global food crisis, due to slowing growth, high unemployment, and burdensome government budgets from spending heavily to combat the "Corona" pandemic.

Obstfeld sees that the high cost of energy remains a challenge, because it increases the costs of transporting food, increases the prices of fertilizers, which require a lot of energy to produce, and diverts grains to biofuel production, away from the production of diets.

big transformations

Even before the pandemic, global food prices were on the rise, as the US-China trade war led to Chinese tariffs on US farm goods.

But with the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, the world witnessed terrible shifts in food demand.

Restaurants closed and more people turned to cooking and eating at home, forcing some American farmers who could not get their produce into the hands of consumers, to throw milk in their fields, and culled herds of cattle.

worsening situation

The International Monetary Fund economist, Christian Bogmans, said that drought and bad weather in major agricultural producing countries such as Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Russia and Ukraine, have exacerbated the situation.

Fund data shows that the average food price inflation worldwide reached 6.85%, the highest level since 2014.

drought and frost

Between April 2020 and December 2021, the price of soybeans increased by 52%, wheat by 80%, and coffee by 70%, largely due to drought and frost in Brazil.

In Africa, bad weather, pandemic restrictions and conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Sudan have disrupted transport routes and raised food prices.

Joseph Siegel, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, estimated that 106 million people on the continent face food insecurity, double the number since 2018. “Africa faces record levels of insecurity,” he said.

America is less severe

As for the United States, the impact is less severe, with food accounting for less than one-seventh of household spending on average, and inflation has become widespread, spreading to energy, used cars, electrical machinery, utilities, and rents, as prices rise.

However, US food prices are still rising sharply, putting a strain on poorer families who spend more of their overall budget on food.

Food prices also rose 6.3% in December 2021 compared to the previous year, while the prices of meat, poultry, fish and eggs jumped 12.5%, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Shipping rates

In addition, Assistant Vice President for International Affairs at the US National Council of Meat Producers, Maria Zippa, said farms face a variety of challenges, including shipping container prices that average 170 percent more than last year, last-minute shipment cancellations, and shortages. Trucks and cold stores.

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