IFPRI and CGIAR at Borlaug Dialogue 2023: Food system repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine war

Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered a series of global food system disruptions that continue today. The two countries are major agricultural exporters, and the war limited the flow of goods and drove up prices of wheat, fertilizers, and other key items around the world. As the war nears the end of its second year, global prices have fallen but effects linger in many countries. To address these issues, IFPRI and CGIAR hosted a breakout session on the impacts of the war on Ukraine’s agricultural sector and exports, and on food systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) at the 2023 World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue on October 26 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Last year, this global conference focused on the impacts of COVID-19, climate change, and conflict. This year’s dialogue built on the discussion of multiple crises with a theme of “Harnessing Change,” which focused on innovation, adaptation, and diversification to improve resilience to future shocks. The IFPRI-CGIAR breakout session contributed to this dialogue by focusing on lessons from the conflict on how to build long-term resilience.

“As we celebrate this year’s World Food Prize winner Heidi Kühn of Roots of Peace for turning minefields into farmland, it is fitting that we look at how the severely widespread use of land mines on Ukrainian agricultural land has impacted one of the world’s major bread baskets,” CGIAR System Board Chair Lindiwe Majele Sibanda said in her opening remarks. Noting the recent outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Sibanda stressed the urgency of building resilience in vulnerable countries and communities around the world.

In her keynote speech, Dina Esposito, Assistant to the Administrator for the Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security (REFS) at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), noted her agency’s efforts to support both Ukrainian producers and LMICs affected by the conflict. Through the Agricultural Resilience Initiative (AGRI-Ukraine), USAID has to date contributed $350 million and leveraged an additional $250 million in private sector and donor investments for this effort, which has focused on grain package and storage in Ukraine and expanding local agricultural markets and financing/insuring small and medium enterprises in LMICs. Beyond Ukraine, USAID has committed $14.6 billion in humanitarian and development assistance to respond to the knock-on effects of the war through food assistance in more than 47 countries. This includes a surge in support for Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global food security initiative. 

Esposito’s key takeaway from the conflict thus far is that we need more of the solutions that have been proven to build resilience—including investing in innovations for sustainable productivity, empowering women as economic actors, and increasing access to finance. “There’s an old saying that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” she said. “Both Russia’s war on Ukraine and COVID revealed weaknesses, but also some strengths in food systems, local to global, and it’s up to us to learn from these bitter experiences, as we can say—I think with much certainty—that more shocks are on the way.”

Antonina Broyaka, a Ukrainian researcher in the Kansas State University Department of Agricultural Economics, focused on the impact Russia’s invasion has had on agricultural production in Ukraine, which fed about 400 million people around the world prior to the war. Direct damages to Ukrainian agriculture are estimated at $8.9 billion due to destroyed or stolen physical assets, and another $34.25 billion due to reduced productivity resulting from the conflict: Disruptions in logistics, increases in production costs, and lower world market prices for Ukrainian export-oriented crops. Broyaka attributed much of these losses to Russia’s blockade of Black Sea ports, as well as to Russian forces placing land mines in agricultural areas. She expressed her fear that “even if the war ends this year, the pre-war acreage of cereals and oilseed crops will be reached no earlier than 2030, because it will take several years to demine land, but their production and export level will not be restored so soon.”

Joe Glauber, Senior Research Fellow in IFPRI’s Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit, spoke about the impact of the war on global markets. As shown in Figure 1, energy, fertilizer, and food prices were already rising due to various shocks before the February 2022 Russian invasion, then soared in the following months. Wheat prices reached record highs before falling again over summer 2022, thanks to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allowed some shipments from Ukrainian ports, and also because of increased production levels elsewhere in the world.

Figure 1

Global wheat exports are projected to fall 7% in 2023/24, Glauber said, largely because significant portions of Ukrainian agricultural land are occupied by Russia or are in active war zones, limiting production to 35%-40% of pre-war levels. He emphasized that the war has already affected three planting seasons in Ukraine, likening the impact to three major droughts in a row—a deficit from which the country will not quickly bounce back.

LMICs have been the most impacted by export decreases—sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in particular, as evidenced by the region’s 7% drop in wheat imports in 2022/23, due to a 13% decrease in Russian exports to the region and a 55% decrease from Ukraine. Although other countries responded by increasing exports to SSA, as shown in Figure 2, it was not enough to offset the declines.

Figure 2

Glauber also pointed out that stocks of wheat have steadily declined since 2020/21, and prices remain volatile compared to the 2012-2021 average. This means that future shocks, such as droughts or further destruction of Black Sea port infrastructure, could cause prices to increase again.

However, global ending stocks of feed grains, such as corn and soybeans, are projected to rebound in 2023/24, and the 2023 price volatility of corn is back near 2012-2021 levels. “Markets have proven resilient,” said Glauber, but it remains to be seen whether a rebound can be sustained, with ample production elsewhere, to help offset further reductions in Ukraine.

David Laborde, Director of FAO’s Agrifood Economics Division, added “bad policies” to the scourges of hunger, war, and climate change, comparing these to the modern four horsemen of the apocalypse in threatening food systems across the globe.

Such policies can quickly turn shocks into crises—such as when price increases triggered by shocks are driven higher by export restrictions, he said. Countries implement export restrictions in the hopes of protecting themselves from shocks outside their borders—but, Laborde noted, “If everyone follows suit, instead of distributing the weight of the shock across everyone, we are going to concentrate it, in many cases on the most vulnerable.”

Climate change also affects these dynamics, he said: Just one month after India Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Indian wheat exports would help fill the void left by the war, the government implemented export restrictions in response to heat waves in the country.

Caitlin Welsh, Director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Global Food and Water Security Program, spoke about land mine contamination in Ukraine, noting the country is now the largest mined area in the world. Demining is a dangerous, costly, and time-intensive process, with long-term implications for agricultural productivity. Even with sufficient expertise, labor, and technology needed to expediently demine Ukraine’s farmland, Welsh said, the process usually requires blowing up mines, which can cause serious soil and water contamination. Yet there is a lack of research on demining operations’ impacts on agricultural soils, meaning that significantly more attention will need to be paid to this issue in coming years.

Welsh shared a poignant quote from a Ukrainian farmer: “The emergency department says that they will not clear the mines in the near future, because they do not have time … We will look for a way out on our own, because today it is cheaper to buy a field than to demine it.”

All of the speakers underscored the need to continue learning from the impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war, with a view towards mitigating future shocks caused by other conflicts, as well as climate-driven extreme weather events and other disasters.

Alix Underwood is a Research Analyst in IFPRI’s Director General’s Office.