Agri-Pulse published an article stating that when the Russian military invasion cut off Ukraine’s ability to export sunflower oil and wheat, it helped push “a cascading food crisis around the world,” according to a spokeswoman for USAID. Now Indonesia, which last week banned the export of palm oil, is exacerbating the conditions that are driving global shortages and price spikes of vegetable oil. Senior research fellow Joseph Glauber said, “Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in terms of supply,” Glauber said, stressing that global vegetable oil prices have risen by 30 percent since February. Global supplies of vegetable oil – a key food ingredient around the world – were tight well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Drought last year in Canada’s canola fields and the rise of soybean oil-based renewable diesel have both played roles, but war in Ukraine and food export bans are now playing an outsized role. “Vegetable oils are a key item in diets around the world and an essential source of fats, accounting for about 10 percent of daily caloric food supply … making them the second most important food group after cereal,” IFPRI researchers – including Glauber – said in a blog post, The impact of the Ukraine crisis on the global vegetable oil market.