The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization tracks food prices around the world via its Food Price Index. This is calculated as the average of five commodity group price indexes, weighted by their shares of global exports in the years 2014–2016. The five commodity groups are: cereals, vegetable oils, dairy, meat and sugars.
It’s important to note: the index doesn’t directly guage the price of food in the shops; it measures the price of food commodities. The former varies from country to country, and depends on factors like local regulations and supply chain issues. But generally speaking, if the Food Price Index rises, the price of food in the shops will rise too.
The chart below plots the index from 1962 to 2022, based on inflation-adjusted prices. The figure given for 2022 is the average for the first three months of the year.

As you can see, the index is currently at its highest ever level. In fact, the value for March (the latest available) was 159, compared to ‘only’ 136 in January – meaning the index has continued to rise over the past three months.
The last time food prices were as high as they are now was during the 1970s oil crisis. In 1973, OPEC imposed an oil embargo against countries that had backed Israel during the Yom Kippur War. This led to a quadrupling of the price of oil, with knock-on effects in other areas of the economy, including food production.
What explains the recent uptick? Well, the first major culprit is the pandemic, and more specifically lockdowns, which caused immense disruption to global supply chains. (Note: since the chart above is based on inflation-adjusted prices, the changes can’t be explained by loose monetary policy.)
The second major culprit is the war in Ukraine, which has put substantial upward pressure on food prices since February. Ukraine and Russia are major supplies of not only wheat, but also sunflower oil and fertilizer.
The combination of sanctions, disruptions caused by the conflict itself, and Russia’s self-imposed export ban, has reduced the volume of exports reaching global markets. And these effects have been compounded by the rising cost of natural gas – a major input to fertilizer production.
The resulting uptick in global food prices has the potential to cause famines throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and other regions that are heavily dependent on wheat imports. The UN’s World Food Programme has warned that 2022 will be a year of “catastrophic hunger”.
“Pockets of famine” have already been reported in Somalia, a country that typically imports 100% of its wheat from Ukraine and Russia.
It’s possible that widespread famine can be averted if more crops are planted in countries with extra capacity, to compensate for the loss of exports from Ukraine and Russia. However, with the price of fertilizer as high as it is, alternative supplies are by no means guaranteed.
All of which raises the question: why did the West not seek a diplomatic solution as soon as the war in Ukraine began? Yes, this could be seen as ‘rewarding Putin’s aggression’, but the costs of ‘not feeding millions of people’ could be much greater. Add the risks of nuclear escalation, and the West’s current approach becomes increasingly hard to understand.
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I wonder if this is something to do with the difficulty of counting people in the occupied parts of Ukraine? I don’t understand why but it is almost bound to make it a problem even defining if someone is part of the Ukrainian population or not.
We’ve just had a census yet, as Prof Norman Fenton keeps illustrating, we haven’t a clue how many people there are in the UK.
I suspect the authorities have got a pretty good idea of how many people there are in the UK, but they pretend not to because it suits them. I expect whatever figures there are have been kept vague enough to allow for plausible deniability.
And Russia has lost at least a million citizens to emigration.
‘This exodus is a terrible blow for Russia,” said Tamara Eidelman, a Russian historian who moved to Portugal after the invasion. “The layer that could have changed something in the country has now been washed away.”
Some say many more have emigrated. More than 3.8 million Russians left the country in the first three months of 2022, according to data from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
https://www.fedstat.ru/indicator/38480
So now some state institutions are now asking even medium-level figures to refrain from foreign travel and banned from travelling more than two hours’ drive from Moscow without official permission.
The FSB have asked former officials who previously had access to state secrets to surrender their passports, and even some who never had access.
“Now they are coming to certain people and saying, ‘please hand in your red civilian passports, because you have access to sensitive information for the motherland, so we want to control your movements’,”
Alexandra Prokopenko, former Russian central bank official
I followed that link but couldn’t make much sense of it. Any tips? It’s not clear whether these are permanent departures.
Where would 3.8 millions Russians be able to go and live, legally?
I’m not questioning the statistics particularly, but Fedstat isn’t Russian, it’s a division in the US Department of Commerce… and I suppose were Russia quoting figures for America we would be expected to treat them with some scepticism?
….the Russian comparison would be Rosstat….
Not only have Ukraine lost 8 million legally, there have been thousands of men leaving illegally, numbers vary from 12,000-15,000 depending on who you read…as this is what they are willing to admit, it could be many more?
As the population is @ 43 million V 146 million, in Russia’s favour …. Russia probably have a long way to go before they are depleted!
The Unified Interdepartmental Information and Statistical System (EMISS) was developed as part of the implementation of the federal target program “Development of State Statistics of Russia in 2007-2011”.
The purpose of creating the System is to provide access via the Internet to state bodies, local governments, legal entities and individuals to official statistical information, including metadata, generated in accordance with the federal plan of statistical work.
EMISS is a state information resource that combines official state information statistical resources formed by the subjects of official statistical accounting as part of the implementation of the federal plan for statistical work.
Access to official statistical information included in the statistical resources included in the interdepartmental system is carried out on a free and non-discriminatory basis.
The system was put into operation by a joint order of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of Russia and Rosstat dated November 16, 2011
No. 318/461 .
The EMISS coordinator is the Federal State Statistics Service.
The EMISS operator is the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation”.
In case of problems while working with the system, please contact us:
info@fedstat.ru , emiss@digital.gov.ru
…as usual I have no idea what this is about..
So Rosstat use a computing system called EMISS…?
You can bet your life they won’t be going anywhere near Ukraine, which actively discriminates against Russian speakers.
Those who did run away to escape the anticipated conscription were clearly listening to Western misinformation, since it was clear that the process would only involve reservists, not raw recruits. And they claim these people were the “elite”. Clearly not very bright and a little yellow.
The FSB reported a slight uptick in Russians traveling to war-torn Ukraine — 328,435 (Jan-Mar 22), up from 316,286 in January-March 2021.
That sounds suspiciously like the number of Russian troops in the liberated regions.
Or maybe something else?
‘RVC reports that it “again visited” Bryansk Oblast, where the fighters managed to perform “combat tasks”, communicate with residents, hand them their postcards and “ask them to hide during the hostilities”.
As proof, the corps released a video in which its fighters really communicate with the residents of the village of Sluchovsk and conduct combat operations there.’
06 Apr 23
Oops……!
In case of problems while working with the system, please contact us:
info@fedstat.ru , emiss@digital.gov.ru
or
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/13/russia-diaspora-war-ukraine/
Take your pick
What she says she said to the FT was “Russia’s security services have almost total leeway to interpret the rules under revisions to laws on state secrets, espionage and treason. Basically any information can be deemed secret, so the embedded FSB officers start telling you that you have sensitive information. What is it? Why is it secret and who decides that? Nobody knows,”
Not quite the same thing.
It is highly likely that Ukraine have lost hundreds of thousands of troops.
Former Pentagon adviser Colonel Douglas McGregor shared secret data on the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“When Zaluzhny was in the US, he met with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and General Milley. He secretly told them that Ukraine had lost 257,000 people since the beginning of the conflict,” the retired officer shared.
A Turkish publication, citing Israeli intelligence agency MOSSAD, claims to show the real number of casualties for both parties in the conflict as Ukrainians killed in action reaches staggering 157,000 with 2,458 NATO soldiers dead and 234,000 injured.
Russia 18,480 dead with 44,500 injured.
US Military analyst William Schryner wrote in January 2023 that “Ukraine has now suffered approximately 500,000 irretrievable (military) casualties and virtually the entirety of their original inventories of military hardware – the equivalent of ALL the personnel and equipment (both active and reserves) with which they commenced this conflict.”
Telegram channels from the frontline show Nato heavy weapons being destroyed on a regular basis and Ukrainian troops and Nato country mercenaries being destroyed by the hundreds every day which confirm the above figures may be accurate with very little Russian losses.
In February 2022 Ukraine passed a law where they would compensate the families of servicemen killed in action.
Ukraine are so corrupt that they would rather designate those killed as “missing” instead so they don’t have to pay out the compensation.
https://imetatronink.substack.com/p/ok-doomer?publication_id=1085164&post_id=95312586&isFreemail=true
This was posted by geo-political analyst Pepe Escobar.
Ukraine have lost 387,000 conscripted soldiers killed in action.
Plus 31,240 mercenaries have been killed.
Ukrainian Telegram channel “Observer”: Open Source INTelligence (Intelligence from open sources), based on reports from funeral agencies, extracts from morgues, as well as the results of an analysis of radio, cellular and satellite exchange of forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reports that as of October 20, irretrievable losses of The Armed Forces of Ukraine amounted to 402,000 people, of which 387,000 were killed. At the same time, to date, the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Ukraine has allegedly prepared more than 320,000 appeals “about the fate of the missing soldiers,” but the SBU has forbidden filing applications with the prosecutor’s office for national security purposes.
https://vk.com/wall578617852_26297
Even the pro-Nato propaganda merchants the BBC stated that only 16,071 named Russian troops had died in total up to March 2023.
They daren’t tell the world the Ukrainian losses which are in the hundreds of thousands.
https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-64840229?ocid=wsrussian.social.in-app-messaging.telegram..russiantelegram_.edit
The BBC have revised this figure to just 17,375 named Russian troops.
https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-64984414
..a whole generation of young men…a whole generation who won’t be father’s…it’s a fuc***g tragedy……
Peace talks NOW….….
but no the USA has just authorised (yesterday) a new $2.6 billion package of U.S. military aid to Ukraine which includes $500 million for immediate supplies…
They weren’t kidding when they said…’to the last Ukrainian’…..that’s what literally will be left……
It is a sad situation. I speak to Ukranians and Russians frequently and they seem remarkably bright and many of them have a wonderful facility for language and really enjoy learning more about English. I think people’s names sound much more beautiful in Russian and they have the patronymic and the diminutive which we seem to have lost so long ago that nobody could possibly notice anymore.
You should always be mindful of the western neurotic fear of death. Terrorist organisations and intelligence agencies all over the world know and have perceived this reality. If you are in that state, the state they want you to be in, then you have to grasp it and snap out of it. Because very shortly there aren’t going to be any comfortable options. You either apply yourself to working with others in order to survive or you don’t.
None of us really appreciate how much we need the next man, whether its taking out bins or whatever, We need to be mindful of just how fragile life is for most of the people in this country, who live in cities. We are moving into a different phase now. I don’t care what happens I know where my loyalty lies. At least in the horror to come we will find out about true character.
There is an assumption that it being encouraged here – that if you knew the reality you could control it. Believe me by the end of this year you are going to see governments showing their people some rather unpleasant tactics. Of course in the volatile times we live in, I would say that the average life expectancy of any government is about two weeks.
Look at the current trajectory in terms of econmics. The dollar based system has a couple of weeks left and the pound is totally subservient. This is a major disruption but people pretend it isn’t going to happen. I can tell you that it is going to happen very soon.
I know how hysterical people are at the moment and really worried and looking for guidance, When this situation g ets seriois you are going to have millions of people who haven’t got the faintest idea about it. A lot of people are simply going to crack up. You have to accept this reality.
It isn;t easy trying to make people understand about the reality to come. We can obviate that if we comne together. If I have one desire it is to keep our people together.