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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Many on here appear to believe that some kind of anti Russian ‘narrative’ has been created by a whole range of nefarious agencies…
No need.
The Russian state has created the narrative, plain for all to see.
Putin told the world what he was doing: the ‘de-Europeanisation’ of a state whose sovereignty he does not accept; this despite Russia’s signature of the Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity in return for the surrender of their nuclear capability in 1994.
‘Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic countries, Ukraine, as history has shown, is impossible as a nation state, and attempts to “build” one naturally lead to Nazism. Ukrainism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that does not have its own civilizational content, a subordinate element of an alien and alien civilization. Debanderization by itself will not be enough for denazification – the Bandera element is only a performer and a disguise for the European project of Nazi Ukraine, therefore the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.’
Putin’s war aims are clear:
‘The “Catholic province” (Western Ukraine as part of five regions) is unlikely to become part of the pro-Russian territories. The line of alienation, however, will be found empirically. It… Read more »
No mention of the burning down of food processing plants in the US
“Add the risks of nuclear escalation, and the West’s current approach becomes increasingly hard to understand.”
Why can none of my family and friends see this?
The problem with the last paragraph is that Putin doesn’t do diplomatic solutions. He only does violence. So that would never have worked. The West should have poured overwhelming NATO force into Ukraine before the invasion happened. Putin would never have dared.invade, not a single person would be dead, not a single building destroyed. The towns and cities of Ukraine would be intact. All those poor people would still be alive, going about their normal peaceful lives.
Several people on sceptics , I’m thinking of two trolls in particular, tree & fingal are so captivated by the MSM’s depiction of Zelensky as Robin Hood and Putin as the sheriff of Nottingham, that they turn a blind eye to the mass starvation and risk of nuclear war, They are a real menace for siding with America’s foreign legion, the NATO.
It is the same for all of us. I don’t want to have to look after an old bag or scrote but I will do it I don’t care. If you are the sort of person who is trying to protect a cushy life then you are well and truly fucked. This is where we are make of it what you will.
‘Well, the first major culprit is the pandemic…’
No!
Pandemics do not govern.
it is entirely down to the bandits in Western Governments and their ruinous policies which have trashed the global economy.
If you have a plump dog or an over indulged pet cat then I beg you, please keep them safely locked up. Once the hunger sets in after a few missed meals then everything starts looking appetizing. This isn’t years away this is months away.
Hope you are prepped.
Not really because the truth is that that there is no real preparation. The real concern in our lives will be the sense of having no culture and nothing to fall back on. That you might have a bit of meat in your freezer or whatever will count for nothing if the love of life is gone.
…
…….
“there is no real preparation”
There’s having a full freezer rather than a half empty one..
I think people in this country need to stop being so childish about cannibalism. There is virtual media silence about the subject.
What’s so difficult in understanding that there is no Western approach to the war between Russia and Ukraine? The Russians attacked, the Ukrainians are defending themselves. These are the belligerents. And all others are – at best – audience. They may applaud this or that player. But they’re not actively involved and thus, not directly in conrol of anything.
These so-called sanctions against Russia are – of course – nothing but nonsensical activity signalling. They’ve been going on without effect on Russia since 2014. And – unless someone here suddenly comes to his senses and stops engaging in costly symbolic politics targetted at an electorate at home – they’ll probably still be ongoing in 2044. And they still won’t have a practical effect on Russian policy.
This would be a topic worthy of discussion. Professor Mearsheimer’s upteempth attempt at shoring up support for Russia by telling threatening stories about Russian nuclear weapons roughly based on They got scared by COVID stories. Obviously, they’ll believe anything and I can scare them with my stories as well! isn’t. The last time strategic air warfare was attempted on this planet, in Vietnam, it was conducted in the most insane overkill mode, dumping more… Read more »
There are reports of active involvement by certain American and English units. This is from Georges Malbrunot, a senior international correspondent with Le Figaro:
French Journalist Releases STUNNING Report After Returning From Ukraine — Says ‘The AMERICANS Are In Charge Of The War.. NOT Ukraine’ – enVolve (en-volve.com)
There is also extensive evidence, from a wide variety of sources, of American involvement at the highest levels of decision-making in the Ukraine.
That is more than being part of an audience, even an eager audience.
If industrial farming, plant breeding, etc have been such a stunning success, it beats me why real food prices (at the wholesale level) are higher than they were in the early 1960s.
Could it be that all the gains have gone into the pockets of middlemen?
Inflation?
Talking of food…
“I, personally, have never bought any of my darling girls a Kinder egg with its trashy surprise. But Kinder have somehow managed to put more than a one yen piece of plastic in the egg.
Welcome to salmonella.
The unhappy surprise.”
“The little toys that they put in the eggs has driven a huge business.
I met a guy who used to design the plastic shite given away with McDonald’s kids ‘meals’.
He told me that billions of tiny toys were produced every week.
Huge shipping containers full of the them.
The stuff that Kinder call chocolate should be banned as it is so awful.
Parents buying this rubbish are guilty of child abuse.”
“Kinder first originated in Germany, therefore it has Nåzi links.
The Hun will do anything for revenge.”
“Didn’t realise the egg was supposed to be edible, thought it was just a receptacle for the shitty toy until it gets binned.”
I thought ‘Famine’ was the next stage of the West’s ongoing ‘Great Reset’ project? Why else has Gates bought up more prime farmland in the US than any other individual but does not appear to be using it to produce food?
Why is Johnson trying to bribe farmers to stop farming when we need all the food we can grow?
Why are they deliberately disrupting food supply chains?
Why sanction Russian exports and try to prolong the Ukraine war unless you wanted to create wheat shortages?
The Four Horsemen have been released by the Globalists – so you have to include Famine.
‘Famine’ now appears to be a “Policy Initiative” sponsored by the UN.
It’s quite hard to escape the notion that it’s all deliberate.
Crash the economy, starve and terrify people, have them beg for your help, introduce a digital currency and permanent surveillance based on forced ‘vaccinations’ which you can ‘tweak’ as desired.
But I appreciate that that is just the ravings of a conspiracy theorist, and that world leaders are generally well-intentioned people who would never kill people by er starting wars, engineering famines and coups, and that therefore there must be sensible explanations.
Bravo.
The sneering use of the term “conspiracy theorist” suggests that nobody ever conspired to do anything (which is obviously ridiculous).
Mark Crispin Miller is very good on this, pointing out that the term is used to discredit people who are asking reasonable and necessary questions.
I think it’s been very effective. Far too many people cannot believe that those in positions of world leadership (in any form) would do something terrible to them, unless they’ve been told by the media to believe it. So anything bad is true of Putin; and nothing seriously bad can be true of anyone else. They are merely mistaken, at worst.
As for believing that any part of the media is involved in any sort of conspiracy – well that makes someone practically certifiable. We must all believe instead that they tell us the truth as best they can, except when they accidentally get something wrong.
why did the West not seek a diplomatic solution as soon as the war in Ukraine began?
What do you mean by “the West”. Several Western leaders – most notably Macron and Orban – sought diplomatic solutions both before and after the war began with little success.
Macron was just posturing as usual – Orban was more serious – but with Hungary’s interests as a neighbour of Ukraine caught in the backwash as his main concern.
Zelensky was told not to compromise with Russia
‘…why did the West not seek a diplomatic solution as soon as the war in Ukraine began?’
Cripes!
Budapest Memorandum 1994
Minsk 1 05 Sept 2014
Minsk 2 12 Feb 2015
A diplomatic solution is no longer in the gift of ‘the West’ and, in any case, Russia now has zero credibility as a negotiating partner.
Ukraine is the only country ever to give up nuclear weapons, in return for guarantees, and it is clear how that worked out for them; an incitement now for every regional power to seek a nuclear capability…..and that is what we see happening.
Even if some kind of treaty could be imposed, the fighting will not stop. Real nationalism, red in tooth and claw, is in play. Kurds are still fighting for a homeland after many years of struggle. Ukraine will be no different.
There are no easy solutions.
This is a major disaster for Europe and the world which could very easily escalate.
Totalitarian plutocracies cannot coexist with adjacent capitalist democracies so, if Ukraine falls, the Baltic states are next on the list. Why else would NATO membership now be so popular in the hitherto staunchly neutral countries of Sweden and Finland.
Is that the… Read more »
“Cripes!
Budapest Memorandum 1994
Minsk 1 05 Sept 2014
Minsk 2 12 Feb 2015”
The Budapest Memorandum is utterly irrelevant. Just a fig-leaf for the Ukrainians for the imposition of their adherence to the non-proliferation regime that they were always going to be coerced into compliance with anyway by the sole superpower at the time.
The Minsk Accords – two attempts to persuade the Ukrainian nationalists to behave in a civilised manner towards their Russian inhabitants, and allow them pretty much what the Scots and Welsh have in the UK – were basically left to wither on the vine by the utter failure of their western guarantors to force the Ukrainian regimes to adhere to them.
Not sure how you fantasise up the supposed distinction between the US sphere countries as “capitalist democracies”, as opposed to Russia being a “totalitarian plutocracy”. Russia is certainly no more “totalitarian” than we are -probably less so because it isn’t run by ideologically motivated woke globalist fanatics. As for plutocracy – that seems to apply perfectly to the US, where big money more or less openly manipulated their latest presidential election, as it does all our politics.
In truth, the distinction today is between… Read more »
‘Not sure how you fantasise up……..’
Curious use of English. Hmmm……..
Simple. There is no fantasy.
‘In truth, the distinction today is between countries run by the woke globalist ideologues….’
Read the papers in Britain on the morning of 06 May. Enjoy!
And there you have it.
Bon voyage!
Untrue. Minsk would have given the republics not just virtual self government, but also a veto over Ukrainian foreign policy.
I’m sure Sturgeon would bite your hand off for it.
In truth, the distinction today is between countries run by the woke globalist ideologues, and those still run by old-style, broadly conservative and pragmatic, fundamentally patriotic governments that actually identify with their own demos, rather than with some universalist fantasy of “building the world back better”.
And then there are the countries like Australia and New Zealand, which are run by the toadies of the “woke globalist ideologues”.
Funny how we never seem to hit on infrastructure solutions to Africa’s problems, preferring to force poorly tested, ineffective vaccines on them, and endless ‘aid’. No focus on nutrition or basic health. What NGO wants to provide a solution? Where’s the business sense in that! Who pushes these killer policies on starving, dirt poor Africans? WHO? There must be Gates leading to this?
Infrastructure has to be maintained. They lack the foresight for this. See Zimbabwe and South Africa for details.
This is an interesting doc on the UK’s food security position, which might be important come food inflation.
I particularly liked the bit where they highlight that the UK is actually self-sufficient in food from a purely calorific point of view. I guess we’ll be hungry, have less choice of food (seasonal), but at least we won’t be dead and some might even lose some weight.
“I particularly liked the bit where they highlight that the UK is actually self-sufficient in food from a purely calorific point of view.”
Couldn’t see that bit on a quick skim through. There is a lot of climate alarmist bs, though.
I wouldn’t be surprised, the amount of food waste and excess (are all those beers strictly necessary…).
Beer provides calories, vitamins and FUN. Enough said.
An interesting document typified by this stating of the obvious:
“Food production does not happen in isolation from society or the environment. Farming can damage soil, air, and water, drive species loss and contribute to climate change, all of which threaten the current and future productivity and sustainability of agriculture, and therefore food security itself. On the other hand, good farming practices can reduce or reverse these harms, encourage biodiversity, and capture carbon all while producing healthy food.”
What do we say to nonsense such as this?
The document is stuffed full of crap about climate change, all of it being dependent on guesswork, or ‘modelling’ to give it today’s terminology.
The document is misleadingly titled – it is not discussing food security it is simply telling where our food comes from. There is nothing about security of supply just confirmation of how little effort has gone in to ensuring security.
Fortunately, we are mostly self-sufficient in meat, eggs, dairy, most vegetables, particularly roots and brassica and seed oils. We are at 100% for grains – wheat, barley and oats. Any suggestions of bread shortages can be confidently denounced as Lies. Fruit languishes at 16% which is shocking given our… Read more »
“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”.
This will cause a massive influx of African and Middle-Eastern refugees into Europe which will put what we have seen previously into the shade. As well as, no doubt, huge demands that we send yet more aid to Africa, at a time when people in Europe are themselves struggling with higher energy bills, higher food prices and inflation on every other aspect of their lives.
It’s a perfect recipe for huge civil unrest.
And it was all cause by the globalist lunatics who:
Probably created SARS-COV-2 in the first place. Even if its escape from a lab was accidental, massively overreacted even though it was quickly apparent that it was not a big threat to humanity except those already vulnerable to illness Implemented draconian lockdowns which massively disrupted supply chains everywhere Successfully provoked Russia, a country which is a massive exporter of raw materials, into intervening in Ukraine, another country which is a massive exporter of raw… Read more »
You know, we really would have been better spending that 500 billion pound lockdown fee on improving irrigation and farming and reversing desertification in Africa.
No one in the West any longer cares about that!
Weird logic. If Putin succeeds in using his control over food and hydrocarbon prices, in order to take over a neighbouring state, then what’s he going to do?
Rinse and repeat.
Heard of the draconian Western sanctions of Russia’s entire economy and financial system ?
Amazing how “facts” can be used so selectively.
And who owns the most farmland in the USA?
Bill Gates.
Coincidence?
No “Cunning Plan”
Apparently tomatoes are going to be very expensive, a market trader was quoted as saying a tray of tomatoes used to be £5 now they are £20. Think I’ll grow my own this year.
It’s become more difficult to buy tomato plants these last two years, I’ve noticed.
I saw them on sale in our local market last week and I’ve ordered a new tomato greenhouse.
Loads on sale in our local Tesco, along with sprouts, kale, broccoli.
Loads of wild garlic and dandelions available round our way, gratis. Food for free could become useful. The North Koreans know all about that…
I have been picking and eating Wild Garlic daily for almost two weeks now.
I’ve started my own crop in the greenhouse now.
This is a result of Emotionalism over Realism as a philosophical concept. There was a similar event in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The target then was lowering the age of consent – hence Jimmy Savile. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.
What followed that period was Punk. It’s time for a revival so that some hard bitten Realist truths can finally be revealed.
If you stop producing fossil fuels as the green nutters are doing in their “great reset”, then you stop producing fertilisers, pesticides, herbicide, the means to run agricultural machinery, the means to transport food. So, you will inevitably cut down food production and literally raise the cost of living … meaning the cost of living will be too high for many, so they die.
That is the reality of this evil “net-zero” … the great reset will reduce carbon, and the carbon they are reducing is millions of people like you.
The current Harry’s Farm is worth a watch for an update on the reality of the situation in the field.
DEFRA needs to spend more time on the FRA and less on the E. If you check the supply estimates you’ll find it is the opposite.
What is FRA?
You might well ask. I think it used to be the ministry for agriculture (and fisheries).
All these fake departments. When are we getting a ministry for men and inequalities then?
Food and Rural Affairs.
Thank you.
Yes the Elites have decided that Human Beings are the problem and that they as an Übermenschlichkeit Elite served by robots and serfs are somehow the solution!
The Russia/Ukraine war started just in time to prevent spring crop seeding. Deliberate? Very possibly. Famine is coming then, at least for the poor countries. We will just have to pay more for what there is. I see a number of food processing factories in America are mysteriously burning down at the moment as well. The WEF globalists seem to have the power to herd us wherever they want.
Bill Gates!
Bill Gates indeed. I understand he is now the largest agricultural land owner in America. He could clearly see problems in the food supply chain some time ago… the man is either clairvoyant or knows exactly what is coming down the line because he and his Davos criminals are actively engaged in engineering our WEF future of owning nothing and being strangely happy at the same time.
I can see my life and savings being taken away but when does the happiness kick In?
That’s the untruthful part of the equation. Remember these guys cannot make any statement that is totally honest. It is beyond them.
When the “drugs” are forced on you!
Wasn’t he buying up a lot of farm land?
He is the owner of more agricultural land in the USA than anyone else.
Billy does like a cheeseburger.
Yes but we ( or the survivors) are destined for his mealy worms!
Putin believed the Ukrainian government would collapse in weeks, like Afghanistan did.
He could not sustain the fiction of his military exercises for ever.
The exact timing of the invasion was for political reasons – ie after the Beijing games.
Yes, the timing aafter Peking was certainly suspicious. Especially after they’d agreed that no limits alliance business.
“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. ”
Ah, you mean in Niger and Chad, which have a decent birth rate? A result for Bill Gates!
The sooner we get rid of deserts, the better. Decent irrigation programmes and the wholly achievable reversal of desertification would have been a much better use of the hundreds of billions BJ spent trying to micro-manage a virus (or whatever he was playing at).
Whatever it was he was playing at …he was just playing!
At the ‘Theatre For The Gullible’ the need is for a new edgy production every week or the punters will lose interest
During their winter season the theatres new productions of ‘Oh god we are running out of petrol’ and ‘There will be a shortage of Cornflakes’ received rave revues
If the theatre closes people might get bored and ask themselves why we need politicians at all
For premiere viewings see radio 2 for details. After yesterdays sunflower oil scare the shelfs at the local supermarket were stripped bare
David Attenborough’s play ‘Climate Change’ has now been running longer than The Mousetrap
Apparently sunflower oil is now considered not so good for you after all – back to Lard then!
Transfats. Fine as long as you don’t heat the oil for, say, cooking.
The human race have been eating animal fats for tens of thousands of years. Vegetable oils became de rigueur about 50 years ago because the vegetable mob maintained it couldn’t possibly be bad for anyone.
So animal fats are now blamed for everything from cancer to obesity despite those conditions taking off over the last 50 years.
Coincidence of course.
I went back to lard / animal fats a couple of years ago and food cooked with them has a delicious unctuousness.
Add the risks of nuclear escalation, and the West’s current approach becomes increasingly hard to understand….
if you think that the elite establishment of the world are guided by sensible considerations, then I have a sustainable energy-saving anti-racist bridge to sell you….
Neil McCoy Ward is often worth a listen. Don’t be deceived by the apparent youth and easy demeanour, he’s an ex-soldier and isn’t afraid to say it how it is. He’s also been banned (then reinstated) by Youtube so that says something …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bj5qnj3MTM
But say what?
Remember when you see the appeals on TV for famine releif showing babies with distended bellies, adults who look like walking cadavers, with a voice over by a sanctimonious actor who probably supported the jab in every arm and the associated orthodoxy. These peoplewill be dying because of the WHO,The Davos supporters (I suggest you look on the website to see which companies are WEF supporters, and by implication supporters of mass starvation) and western governments who worked together to create this situation, such that they could establish total control over their citizens in order to bring in their new world order, and more money and power to their club
Yep.