Food Security

The Russia-Ukraine war has focused global attention on the key economic roles that those countries play as major exporters of agricultural commodities. Over 2019-2021, they accounted for 12% of global agricultural trade on a kilocalorie basis, with a combined market share of 34% for wheat, 26% for barley, 17% for maize, and 75% for sunflower oil. The war has scrambled this picture, with Ukraine’s exports falling dramatically, and Russia’s falling, then recovering.  

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered global disruptions in markets for key food crops and fertilizers, threatening food security worldwide. With the war now entering its second year, high international food prices have moderated, though domestic price levels remain high in many low- and mid-income countries. Here, we turn to global fertilizer markets, examining how they weathered the past year and the likely impacts going forward for agricultural production and food security.

When Russian troops invaded Ukraine one year ago, the war appeared to pose a grave threat to global food security.

In 2019, an estimated 690 million people around the world were undernourished, and nearly 3 billion people were unable to afford healthy diets. The world has the potential to make significant progress in reducing those numbers by 2030 – with the right investments.

Frequent food crises with spiking prices have become the new normal in the 21st century, bringing urgency to the task of understanding their nutritional impacts on poor and food insecure populations. In a new analysis of 1.27 million children in 44 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) we show that exposure to food inflation in the womb and first years of life is associated with greater risks of child wasting in the short run and stunting in the long run.