More than nine million people in the UK are experiencing “hunger and hardship”: a situation in which events such as job loss or an unexpected bill necessitate foodbank use, the Trussell Trust reports.

The charity’s interim report, The Cost of Hunger and Hardship, was published on Wednesday. It is based on analysis of government data carried out by WPI and the Centre for Social Policy Studies. A final report on the project, which seeks to explore the full scale of the need for emergency food in the UK, is due to be published in the spring of 2025.

The findings suggest that a record 9.3 million people in the UK, including three million children, are facing hunger and hardship — a measure created by the Trussell Trust, which has a network of more than 1400 foodbanks.

This figure has increased by one million since 2019, the report says. A further 425,000 people are projected to face this situation in the next three years.

Read it all.

BREAKING 🚨 Almost half of people claiming Universal Credit ran out of food in the last month and did not have enough money to buy more.

Universal Credit is falling short and pushing people to food banks. People cannot wait for an economic turnaround to improve their current… pic.twitter.com/m4fKXeGzCI

— Trussell (@TrussellUK) September 3, 2024

A South Sudanese bishop has warned that food is being used as a weapon by parties involved in the brutal civil war in Sudan, a country on the brink of famine.

“They harass humanitarian agencies,” the RC Bishop of Yei, the Rt Revd Alex Lodiong Sakor Eyobo, told the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales last week. “And, when humanitarian agencies are harassed, they stop delivering food because they also have to protect their own lives.

“The food aid sometimes is blocked by the RSF [Rapid Support Forces], not allowing them [the agencies] to enter. Because when you take food aid to the people, you are also going to feed their own enemies.

“So, they use food as a weapon, so that once food is not delivered, their enemy is weakened. That’s their point of view.”

Read it all.

A South Sudanese bishop has warned that food is being used as a weapon by parties involved in the brutal civil war in Sudan, a country on the brink of famine.https://t.co/mGd5sSFiPS

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) July 12, 2024

….a better diet for pregnant mothers and infants would eventually make humanity more intelligent. Alas, child malnutrition is far from being eradicated—and not just in poor, war-charred places like Congo. Many middle-income countries also have shockingly high rates.

How much of a cognitive boost would the world get from feeding babies better? Precision is tricky, but scientists agree it would be huge. If a fetus’s weight is below the tenth percentile, the child can expect to score half a standard deviation worse on all neuro-developmental measures—the rough equivalent of seven iq points. After birth, the speeds at which a baby puts on weight (before four months) and length (before 12 months) are good predictors of iq at the age of nine. A study in Bangladesh found that the combination of malnutrition and inadequate stimulation common in poor families was associated with an iq gap of a whole standard deviation (about 15 points) by the age of five.

Even if a baby has enough macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat), its brain development can be hobbled by a lack of micronutrients such as iron, iodine or zinc. Yet such deficiencies remain rife: half the world’s young children and two-thirds of women of reproductive age do not get enough micronutrients. For brain development, the most serious shortfall is iron. Two-fifths of children aged 6-59 months were anaemic (iron deficient) in 2019. Between 2012 and 2019, at least 92 countries saw no improvement on this score, laments Dr Shekar.

Read it all.

The cover of @TheEconomist this week: Small investments in nutrition could make the world brainier pic.twitter.com/kEsSdAieMt

— alain servais (@aservais1) July 12, 2024

The head of the United Nations children’s agency, Unicef, says Sudan is one of the worst places in the world for children.

Catherine Russell says it now has the largest displacement of children anywhere, with millions facing malnutrition and most not in school

She is travelling to the country torn apart by more than a year of brutal civil war as warnings of famine grow louder.

The pillars of Sudan’s food economy have collapsed, and both warring parties – the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – are restricting the delivery of desperately needed aid.

Children were at the sharp end of this hunger crisis, Ms Russell told the BBC while en route in Nairobi: nine million don’t get enough to eat regularly, and nearly four million face acute malnutrition.

Read it all.

Millions of children going hungry in Sudan – Unicef https://t.co/eT49aHTHzz

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) June 24, 2024

Consumers are voting with their wallets—and some of America’s best-known food brands are losing.

Coffee drinkers are leaving Starbucks’s loyalty program. Chips Ahoy cookies are lingering longer on grocery-store shelves. Fewer customers are ordering at fast-food drive-throughs and kiosks, pressuring companies such as Wendy’s and McDonald’s.

For about three years following the Covid-19 pandemic, food companies pushed through a series of sharp price increases, saying they needed to recoup their own rising costs—and that consumers would adjust to stick with their favorite brands. As a result, the portion of U.S. consumers’ income spent on food has reached the highest level in three decades.

Now, some consumers are hitting their limits. Restaurant chains and some food manufacturers are reporting sliding sales or slowing growth that they attribute to consumers’ inability—or refusal—to pay prices that are in some cases a third higher than prepandemic times.

Read it all.

“I’m done.” Consumers, fed up with rising prices at restaurants and supermarkets, pull back from Chips Ahoy cookies, Starbucks coffee and other big food brands. https://t.co/FiKOPd0u4G

— WSJ Business News (@WSJbusiness) May 5, 2024

The number of farms in America is shrinking as growers get older and producing crops gets a lot more expensive.

The US had 1.9 million farms in 2022, a 6.9% drop from five years ago and the lowest since at least 1992, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture’s Census of Agriculture released on Tuesday. The total acreage used in farms dropped about 2.2%.

The survey, conducted every five years, shows an increasingly challenging outlook for food production in the US as the population grows. The high cost of land and equipment has raised the bar of entry into agriculture, making it more expensive for the next generation to produce crops.

Meanwhile, the average age of producers continued to climb, reaching 58.1 years in 2022.

Read it all.

The number of farms in America is shrinking as growers get older and producing crops gets a lot more expensive, according to the USDA’s Census of Agriculture https://t.co/DZgnTtvkdr

— Bloomberg (@business) February 13, 2024

It looked like a military campaign. The farmers called it “Operation Paris Siege,” while the French interior minister ordered an “important defensive system” to protect the capital and its airports.

On Monday, angry agriculturalists and their allies deployed their tractors in an attempt to surround Paris, choking major roadways and disrupting not only traffic and trade, but also politics and normal life.

Farmers are emerging as the protest movement of the moment. In multiple countries across Europe, they have been driving their combines and harvesters into the streets to oppose cuts to subsidies and new regulations, some of them designed to reduce climate-changing emissions.

France, of course, is deeply familiar with protests. But as Paris prepares to host the Olympics this summer, and as the country’s ruling political centrists gird for a challenge from the far right in European Parliament elections, the farmer protests have the potential to be particularly destabilizing.

Read it all.

French farmers deployed their tractors to choke major highways, disrupting not only trade and traffic, but also politics and normal life, to protest subsidy cuts and new regulations. https://t.co/I0TVeKa6aq

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 30, 2024

Read it all.

More than 44.2 million Americans lived in households that struggled with hunger in 2022, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released Wednesday — an increase of 10.3 million over the previous year. https://t.co/wkZNRuOkSM

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 26, 2023

A Walworth bakery and cafe is baking its loaves from the bowels of a Georgian church after saying its rent became unaffordable.

Independent eatery Louie Louie has renamed itself Saint Louie after relocating to the crypt inside St Peter’s Church, on Sunday, October 15.

The cafe’s owners have said they are “delighted” by the move and that its products will be cheaper thanks to a more affordable rent.

Read it all.

#Walworth cafe and bakery moves into church crypt@LouieLouie_Ldn @StPeterWalworthhttps://t.co/IA0r9isuFS pic.twitter.com/0mJIZ0BMti

— Southwark News (@Southwark_News) October 19, 2023

The 85-year-old server was eager to kick off his shift, welcoming customers into the restaurant with a hearty greeting: “Irasshaimase!” or “Welcome!” But when it came time to take their orders, things got a little complicated.

He walked up to a table but forgot his clipboard of order forms. He gingerly delivered a piece of cake to the wrong table. One customer waited 16 minutes for a cup of water after being seated.

But no one complained or made a fuss about it. Each time, patrons embraced his mix-ups and chuckled along with him. That’s the way it goes at the Orange Day Sengawa, also known as the Cafe of Mistaken Orders.

Read it all.

With one of the world's oldest populations, Japan faces a pressing national health challenge in dementia. One cafe in western Tokyo is experimenting with new ways to try empower patients by hiring them to work as servers. https://t.co/hDmKAahMyl

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 19, 2023

Thousands of people are working at the run of new warehouses and manufacturing sites spreading throughout the Charleston region in recent years and all of them need to eat.

Trouble is, many of those industrial buildings are located in congested or out-of-the-way areas that aren’t close to quick and easy dining options, leaving workers with limited choices when it comes to grabbing a meal during a short lunch or dinner break.

Now some businesses are recognizing that a full-bellied employee can be more productive than one who’s going hungry, and they’re adding food to the list of perks that workers can take advantage of without having to leave the factory. While the meal offerings aren’t necessarily priced lower than what a worker could find elsewhere, the convenience can add up to dollars in terms of time and travel expenses that are saved.

Read it all.

Some businesses are recognizing that a full-bellied employee can be more productive than one who's going hungry and they're adding food to the list of perks that workers can take advantage of without having to leave the factory. https://t.co/n3AOlEI0xm

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) July 3, 2023

People who showed up to their restaurant jobs while sick were linked to 40 percent of food poisoning outbreaks with a known cause from 2017 to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released on Tuesday.

Paid sick leave and other policies that support sick workers could improve food safety outcomes, according to the report, which was based on a review of 800 food poisoning outbreaks, using data provided by 25 state and local health departments.

Of the 500 outbreaks where investigators identified at least one cause, 205 involved workers showing up sick, the report said. Other common causes included contaminated raw food items, in 88 cases, and cross-contamination of ingredients, in 68 cases.

In 555 of the outbreaks, investigators were able to determine what virus, bacterium, toxin, chemical or parasite was to blame. Most outbreaks were caused by salmonella or norovirus, the report said.

Read it all.

Restaurant workers who showed up to their jobs while sick were linked to 40% of food poisoning outbreaks with a known cause, according to a CDC report released Tuesday. https://t.co/7momqxwjdt

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 31, 2023

The corporate cafeteria can be an especially lonely place these days.

“You used to walk in at 12 o’clock on a Tuesday and stand in line to get something,” said Casey Allen, 46, who works for a division of the agricultural chemical company BASF in Raleigh, N.C. “Now, you walk in and you’re usually first in line.”

A paternalistic fixture of white-collar life born of the Industrial Revolution, the office dining room survived the midcentury move to sprawling suburban office parks. It weathered the rise and fall of cubicle culture and power lunches, and more recently, the lavish excess of the Silicon Valley office lunch.

But as the American office emerges from its pandemic slumber, can the cafeteria survive layoffs, a workweek that sometimes requires only a few days in the mother ship and a new, more demanding generation of employees?

Read it all.

Employees, especially younger ones, are demanding more culturally authentic meals and climate-friendly kitchen protocols, like reducing waste.

The Corporate Cafeteria Is Broken. So How to Feed Workers? https://t.co/CSz9fBWlSR

— Sean Graf (@seangraf) January 24, 2023

Nearly three million adults in the UK are estimated to have sought help from church or other religious organisations since the start of the year as a result of the cost of living crisis, according to research published today.

New findings show that overall almost four in 10 (38 per cent) of UK adults have sought help this year because of the squeeze on living costs, with family and friends the most common source of help at 24 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.

However the polling by Savanta, for the Church of England, also found that five per cent of UK adults, approximately equivalent to 2.6 million people, report having sought help from churches or other religious organisations.

Six in 10 of those who sought help from churches and other religions said they had received free food or groceries (60 per cent). Half said they received low-cost food or groceries (50 per cent) or hot food (48 per cent), and four in 10 (40 per cent) said they had been provided with warm spaces.

Read it all.

"Churches have been providing a lifeline to people struggling to balance their household budgets and provide for their families…"
– @BishopPaulB

Read more about how churches have been providing practical support at https://t.co/LhZxjDd0ZO.

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) December 22, 2022

Mark Seed now runs a community food project in Trowbridge, east Cardiff.

BBC Wales analysis of new Census data suggests six of Wales’ most deprived communities are in the city.

A charity warns that struggling households do not just appear in areas long associated with poverty and policy needs to focus on people not places.

Trowbridge lies in what Mr Seed calls an “arc of poverty” from east to west of the Welsh capital, with issues endemic in his area.

“I’m still shocked by the fact that we have people who are eating pet food,” he said.

Read it all.

People in Cardiff 'eating pet food' as cost of living rises https://t.co/TiJt4NWaT0

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) December 1, 2022

“Ahead of today’s statement one of our key concerns was to see benefits keep pace with inflation. So we welcome the Chancellor’s commitment in this regard but continue to call for the end to the two-child limit on Universal Credit, which hits some of the poorest families hardest.

“This is going to be a very hard winter for many. Our churches, in communities across the country, are already reporting alarming rises in demand for foodbanks and other services which have become a lifeline.

“It is heartbreaking to hear of people who just a year ago were donating to foodbanks but are now using them themselves.

Read it all.

“It is heart-breaking to hear of people who just a year ago were donating to foodbanks but are now using them themselves."

Read a response on the #autumnstatement2022 from @BishopPaulB and Bishop of St Albans, at https://t.co/Y7woEJn6EL.

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) November 17, 2022

The Mississippi River — the immense, quiet highway that courses down the middle of America, moving critical food, wood, coal and steel supplies to global markets — is shrinking from drought, forcing traffic to a crawl at the worst possible time.

With water levels at record lows, barges have run aground, causing traffic jams as boats wait for the US Army Corps of Engineers to dredge a path through the shallows. The problem has been building for months. Summer brought meager rain to much of the Plains and Midwest. Now it’s harvest time, when farmers bring in their grains and other crops, send them to market, and lay down fertilizer before the winter snows. The shriveled Mississippi has forced them to seek alternatives, all of them more expensive, like moving soybeans by rail to the Gulf Coast or shipping everything through distant West Coast ports. That will inevitably increase pressure on global food prices at a time when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already sent them soaring.

The river is “low, been low and not getting filled anytime soon – so a bad situation getting worse,” said Jeremy Jack, who just harvested his crops on 11,500 acres of land in the Mississippi Delta. “We don’t have any soybean storage. Beans are in places where they shouldn’t be and losing quality.”

Read it all.

The Mississippi is shrinking from drought – increasing pressure on global food prices at a time when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already tightened supply.

Read The Big Take https://t.co/W5rbORTIjk

— Bloomberg CityLab (@CityLab) November 10, 2022

FOODBANKS and charities have replaced social security and Universal Credit as the last line of defence in the cost-of-living crisis, but the faith and voluntary sectors are themselves in a precarious state, says an 89-page report from the religion-and- society think tank Theos, published on Monday.

In a foreword to the report, A Torn Safety Net: How the cost of living crisis threatens its own last line of defence, the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams write that compassion is not running out, but that money is, to the extent that some who have donated to foodbanks are now themselves relying on them.

They warn: “The shocking reality is that this winter, we are likely to see charities being forced to stop feeding the hungry so they can help the starving, cut back on support to the poorly housed so they can focus on the fast rising numbers of homeless, and give up on helping the down-at-heel because their priority has to be the destitute.”

The report was written by Hannah Rich and informed by a series of 48 interviews, conducted between January and August this year, in Cornwall, Glasgow, Wolverhampton, and the London Borough of Newham. It speaks of a real danger that churches and other faith groups will close “because they cannot afford to keep the lights on or find enough volunteers to sustain their social action”.

Read it all.

Charities may have to stop helping hungry and homeless, as they are struggling themselves, @Theosthinktank reports https://t.co/zTqYRwdLPp

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) November 7, 2022

Religious leaders have backed The Independent‘s call for free school meals to be extended to more children living in poverty and urged the government to make it one of its priorities this winter.

Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham, said: “It is heartbreaking to think of children living in poverty facing this winter without free school meals and the impact this will have on their health, wellbeing and educational outcomes.”

Our Feed the Future campaign, in partnership with the Food Foundation and a coalition of charities, calls on the government for free school meals to be extended to all children living in families that rely on universal credit.

Mr Butler, who is lead bishop for the Church of England in the House of Lords on welfare issues, added: “The Independent has shone a light on the heroic efforts of schools to step in and support their pupils and struggling families through initiatives such as school food banks but it really should not be down to them to fill this gap. I have long held that all children in families in receipt of universal credit should receive free school meals and I urge the government to give this priority in their spending plans.”

Read it all.

#FeedTheFuture 🔴

Religious leaders back our campaign to urgently extend free school meals https://t.co/fK1hGv7uTE

— The Independent (@Independent) October 31, 2022

Child poverty in the UK is reaching worrying levels. Paltry wages, low benefit payments and a cost of living crisis mean the UK’s poorest families are getting poorer.

Analysis from the Resolution Foundation has projected that a further 500,000 children will fall into poverty by April 2023.

Children’s charities, schools and food aid organisations are working tirelessly to plug the gaps created by the welfare system. Food banks are now being set up in schools so children have enough to eat.

Children are perhaps the most vulnerable group in any society, and often first to feel the effects of rising poverty across society. Here are the basics on what child poverty is, what causes it and the impact it has.

Read it all.

'Children are perhaps the most vulnerable group in any society, and often first to feel the effects of rising poverty across society.'

This is why we're calling on governments across the UK to #ShiftTheDial on child health. @BigIssue https://t.co/zbUWmXcZU1

— RCPCH (@RCPCHtweets) September 22, 2022

A looming US railway strike has already halted shipments of a critical fertilizer ingredient at a time when American farmers need it the most.

Rail officials are no longer shipping ammonia, an important component of about three quarters of all fertilizer, because it would be dangerous if the hazardous material was stranded during a potential rail strike, according to the Association of American Railroads. Ammonia is used in explosives as well as being an essential nutrient for plants.

While the average consumer rarely thinks about fertilizer, it can make or break crop production. Global food prices have touched records in recent months as inflation ripples through economies and hunger levels rise. The cost of growing food in the US is set to rise by the most ever in 2022.

Any rail disruptions would come at a time of peak demand. After the latest crop is harvested, North American farmers will need to apply fertilizer to replenish nutrients in the soil that are lost during the growing season. The chemicals are already scarce because plants have shut down in Europe due to the energy crisis there, and the war in Ukraine is hampering shipments.

Read it all.

NYT top #economy #railstrike #labourmarket #unions #workers pic.twitter.com/VY2djSuG3i

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) September 14, 2022

Ronald J. Sider, organizer of the evangelical left and author of ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger,’ died on Wednesday at 82. His son told followers that Sider had suffered from a sudden cardiac arrest.

For nearly 50 years, Sider called evangelicals to care about the poor and see poverty as a moral issue. He argued for an expanded understanding of sin to include social structures that perpetuate inequality and injustice, and urged Christians to see how their salvation should compel them to care for their neighbors.

“Salvation is a lot more than just a new right relationship with God through forgiveness of sins. It’s a new, transformed lifestyle that you can see visible in the body of believers,” he said. “Sin is a biblical category. Given a careful reading of the world and the Bible and our giving patterns, how can we come to any other conclusion than to say that we are flatly disobeying what the God of the Bible says about the way he wants his people to care for the poor?”

Read it all.

Ron Sider has died.

He was known for his advocacy for the poor and was called the “burr in the ethical saddle” of the white evangelical horse. https://t.co/AMJQ5lWLqi

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) July 28, 2022

Just-Ice is an innovative social enterprise that combines a love of ice-cream with a desire to provide sympathetic employment to survivors of modern slavery.

Situated in the heart of Poynton, a leafy suburb in Cheshire, Just-Ice is helping to raise awareness of modern slavery amongst Poynton’s school children, church, and wider community as well as employing several survivors of modern slavery. It is a brilliant example of a group of Christians taking action and could be mirrored in other communities across the country.

Jo Rodman, the founder of Just-Ice Poynton, was considering a vocation in ordained ministry when she heard about a Christian couple in Derby who had turned their passion for ice cream into a thriving social enterprise. She was excited about starting a similar café in Poynton and was encouraged by the Director of Vocations at Chester Diocese to pursue the idea as part of a Distinctive Deacon role. Distinctive Deacons have a strong call to an outward-looking and community-minded ministry. They often have a particular concern for issues of poverty and justice.

Read it all.

A Cheshire ice cream cafe set up by a trainee #DistinctiveDeacon is helping to raise awareness of modern slavery, and employing several survivors of modern slavery.

Read more on this story from @theclewer at https://t.co/XlA4GklXDR. @ChesterDiocese

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) July 21, 2022

Ukraine and Russia have signed “mirror” deals which will allow Kyiv to resume exports of grain through the Black Sea.

The agreement will allow millions of tonnes of grain, currently trapped in Ukraine by the war, to be exported.

The world shortage of Ukrainian grain since Russia’s 24 February invasion has left millions at risk of hunger.

However, Kyiv refused to sign a direct deal with Moscow, and warned “provocations” would be met with “an immediate military response”.

Both sides attended the signing ceremony in Istanbul but did not sit at the same table. Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu signed Moscow’s deal first, followed by Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov signing Kyiv’s identical agreement.

Read it all.

Putin’s illegal war has pushed many millions of the world’s most vulnerable to the brink of starvation.

This development is a beacon of hope for the months ahead.

There’s no time to waste, the deal must be implemented fully and without delay. https://t.co/NV8LG1R9zb

— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) July 22, 2022

When Alex and Caileen Ostenson moved from the Twin Cities to Evansville, Minn., five years ago to be closer to family, the local grocery store had recently closed after more than seven decades in business.

The nearest town with a supermarket is 20 miles away.

So in early 2020, the couple started brainstorming ideas that would allow them to operate a store in the town of 600 about two hours northwest of Minneapolis.

“We had just been hearing a lot from people, ‘It would be nice if we had a grocery store back in town. That’s something we really miss,’ ” recalled Caileen. “That is a staple. It’s a cornerstone part of a community.”

So, with help from local donations, the couple remodeled a main street storefront into a self-serve grocery store.

Read it all.

When the local grocery store closed after seven decades in business, residents of Evansville, Minn., had to drive 20 miles to the nearest supermarket.

Now, thanks to a self-serve grocery store, the town has access 24 hours a day.https://t.co/bVBOWnBGoW

— NPR (@NPR) July 15, 2022

Children will have access to free breakfasts during the summer holidays through a new initiative.

Portsmouth City councillors George and Brian Madgwick are personally donating £4,000 to fund the scheme.

The breakfasts will be held at St Michael and All Angels Church in Paulsgrove every weekend through the summer holidays.

George Madgwick said they hoped it would “ease the pressure” of the current cost of living crisis.

Read it all.

Two Portsmouth City councillors are personally paying to provide children with free breakfasts during the summer holidays.https://t.co/eXZC94f88h

— BBC Radio Solent (@BBCRadioSolent) June 30, 2022

Interestingly, they observed a decline in the populations of these pathogens after the introduction of APFs. The researchers further deposited the antimicrobial fibers on avocados. They noticed that the APF coating prevented the growth of pathogens on the fruit and protected the same from spoilage and damage. Thus increasing the shelf life of avocados by about 50 percent.

Whereas plastic packets often release harmful chemicals into our food and take more than 400 years to biodegrade, the APF coating is a naturally derived biodegradable and non-toxic biopolymer that does not impact the quality of the edible it covers (a previous study also highlights that humans can digest pullulan). Moreover, according to the researchers, it can be easily washed off from a food item using water and takes only three days to completely decompose in the soil.

Excited with these results, Demokritou wrote, “What we have come up with is a scalable technology, which enables us to turn biopolymers, which can be derived as part of a circular economy from food waste, into smart fibers that can wrap food directly. This is part of the new generation, ‘smart’ and ‘green’ food packaging.”

Read it all.

Sayonara you evil plastic food wraps.https://t.co/zQKdti4P0C

— Interesting Engineering (@IntEngineering) June 20, 2022

Newly declassified U.S. intelligence shows that a Russian naval blockade has halted maritime trade at Ukrainian ports, in what world leaders call a deliberate attack on the global food supply chain that has raised fears of political instability and shortages unless grain and other essential agricultural products are allowed to flow freely from Ukraine.

Russia’s navy now effectively controls all traffic in the northern third of the Black Sea, making it unsafe for commercial shipping, according to a U.S. government document obtained by The Washington Post.

The document, based on recently declassified intelligence, analyzed the density of Russian naval activity along portions of Ukraine’s southern coast and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia occupied and annexed in 2014. The blockade that ensued following Russia’s invasion in February halted civil maritime traffic, “entrapping Ukrainian agricultural exports and jeopardizing global food supplies,” according to a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the intelligence.

Read it all.

Newly declassified U.S. intelligence shows that a Russian naval blockade has halted maritime trade at Ukrainian ports, in what world leaders call a deliberate attack on the global food supply chain. https://t.co/CrmluGjJEp

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 25, 2022

At the beginning of 2022 the world-spanning system which makes this possible was already in a ropey state. The number of people with access to food so poor that their lives or livelihoods were at immediate risk had risen from 108m to 193m over the past five years, according to the un’s World Food Programme (wfp). A lot of that near-doubling of “acute food insecurity” was due to the covid-19 pandemic, which reduced incomes and disrupted both farm work and supply chains; a good bit more was down to rising prices of energy and shipping as the effects of the pandemic wore off. Things were made worse by swine flu in China and a series of bad harvests in exporting countries, some of which were due to La Niña conditions that began in the middle of 2020. La Niña is a recurrent pattern of currents and wind patterns in and over the equatorial Pacific which has worldwide effects, just as its also-troublesome counterpart El Niño does.

Global grain stocks were, admittedly, quite high. But they were mostly in the hands of well-off importing nations, not those of exporters keen to sell them or poor importers likely to need them. “If we do not address the situation immediately,” David Beasley, who runs the wfp, told the Munich Security Conference in February, “over the next nine months we will see famine, we will see destabilisation of nations and we will see mass migration.”

Just six days after he spoke those words Russia rammed a rifle barrel into the already creaking machinery. In 2021 Russia and Ukraine were the world’s first and fifth biggest exporters of wheat, shipping 39m tonnes and 17m tonnes respectively—28% of the world market. They also grow a lot of grain used to feed animals, such as maize and barley, and are the number one (Ukraine) and number two (Russia) producers of sunflower seeds, which means they have 11.5% of the vegetable-oil market. All told, they provide almost an eighth of the calories traded worldwide.

Ukrainian food exports were promptly throttled by the war; Russian ones were dented by the indirect effects of sanctions. Grain prices shot up. Having fallen back a little as the shock wore off, they are now on the rise again. On May 16th, the first day of trading after India imposed its restrictions, wheat prices in Chicago, the global benchmark, rose by 6%; on May 18th they were 39% higher than they were when Russia launched its invasion.

Read it all.

No countries are immune to the effects of the worsening global food crisis. The countries hit worst, though, are poor ones https://t.co/xU0HaKcZTN

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 22, 2022

Mr Putin must not use food as a weapon. Shortages are not the inevitable outcome of war. World leaders should see hunger as a global problem urgently requiring a global solution.

Russia and Ukraine supply 28% of globally traded wheat, 29% of the barley, 15% of the maize and 75% of the sunflower oil. Russia and Ukraine contribute about half the cereals imported by Lebanon and Tunisia; for Libya and Egypt the figure is two-thirds. Ukraine’s food exports provide the calories to feed 400m people. The war is disrupting these supplies because Ukraine has mined its waters to deter an assault, and Russia is blockading the port of Odessa.

Even before the invasion the World Food Programme had warned that 2022 would be a terrible year. China, the largest wheat producer, has said that, after rains delayed planting last year, this crop may be its worst-ever. Now, in addition to the extreme temperatures in India, the world’s second-largest producer, a lack of rain threatens to sap yields in other breadbaskets, from America’s wheat belt to the Beauce region of France. The Horn of Africa is being ravaged by its worst drought in four decades. Welcome to the era of climate change.

All this will have a grievous effect on the poor. Households in emerging economies spend 25% of their budgets on food—and in sub-Saharan Africa as much as 40%. In Egypt bread provides 30% of all calories. In many importing countries, governments cannot afford subsidies to increase the help to the poor, especially if they also import energy—another market in turmoil.

The crisis threatens to get worse.

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— Christian Odendahl (@COdendahl) May 19, 2022