How war in global breadbasket threatens food security everywhere (Christian Science Monitor) 

Christian Science Monitor published an article stating that when Ukraine banned the export of wheat this month and started scattering land mines in fields of winter cereals and sunflowers to slow invading Russian troops, it was bad news for Egyptian families struggling to put food on the table. Egypt, which counts on Ukraine and Russia for half its food imports, was already facing food supply disruptions and high prices as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate-related production losses. Senior research fellow David Laborde said, “Global food inventories before the war were already very low, even lower than in 2007-2008, when we had the last big food-price crisis.” “Now we have this war in what is the breadbasket for North Africa and the Middle East,” he adds. “And while we’re not going to have famine in Egypt, we could see unpredictable and destabilizing consequences across the region.” “Globally the most important thing will be avoiding the temptation for producing countries to slap additional export restrictions on food and fertilizer,” says Mr. Laborde, the researcher. Beyond that, he’d like to see international initiatives to assist farmers in countries – in sub-Saharan Africa, for example – that simply can’t afford the shock of steep fertilizer price hikes.