Following fierce farm protests over gluts of Ukrainian grain and other food items in their domestic markets, four European Union countries—Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Hungary—have temporarily imposed import restrictions on key agricultural products from Ukraine. Restrictions in Bulgaria entered into force on April 24, and Romania, another EU member, has considered similar measures. The countries’ governments have stressed that these bans are temporary and imposed out of concern for their own farmers, who are seeing prices and incomes fall.

Over the past decade, the world’s food systems have faced multiple significant shocks, from the COVID-19 pandemic and the impacts of the Russia-Ukraine conflict to numerous climate change-driven natural disasters and instances of civil unrest and political instability. These challenges have disrupted markets, driven up food and fertilizer prices and price volatility, reduced food availability and accessibility, and pushed millions of people into hunger.

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 all-out war on Ukraine has inflicted devastating impacts that continue to mount more than a year after the invasion. As of September 2022, even before Russia’s winter bombing campaign, the total damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure was an estimated $127 billion, equal to 64% of the country’s 2021 GDP. More than 14 million Ukrainians have left their homes, including more than 8 million refugees.

The real global price of food surged in 2022, reaching well above the previous peak seen in the 2011 food price crisis. While prices declined somewhat in July 2022, they remain alarmingly high, and some countries have enacted policies, such as export bans, to try to rein in prices on their domestic markets.

The Russia-Ukraine war has caused significant price volatility in agricultural markets over the past year—for wheat, in particular, price levels and price volatility reached the highest levels since the 2007/08 marketing year. Both have fallen back to pre-war levels over the past six months, but volatility remains high relative to historical levels (Figure 1), indicating that significant market uncertainty remains, creating ongoing vulnerability for global food security.

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.

The FAO Food Price Index continued to drop slightly in February, reaching almost 19 percent below its March 2022 peak. This represents the eleventh consecutive month of decline.