Two UN food agencies on Monday issued stark warnings about multiple, looming food crises in the world, driven by conflict, climate shocks, the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, and exacerbated by the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine, which pushed food and fuel prices to record highs in many nations across the globe.
The ‘Hunger Hotspots—FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity’ report issued on Monday calls for urgent humanitarian action in 20 “hunger hotspots” where acute hunger is expected to worsen from June to September 2022—to save lives and livelihoods, and prevent famine.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said the war in Ukraine has exacerbated the already steadily rising food and energy prices worldwide, which are currently affecting economic stability across all regions. The effects are expected to be particularly acute where economic instability and spiraling prices combine with drops in food production due to climate shocks such as recurrent droughts or flooding.
The report finds that—alongside conflict—frequent and recurring climate shocks continue to drive acute hunger and shows that we have entered a “new normal” where droughts, flooding, hurricanes, and cyclones repeatedly decimate farming and livestock rearing, drive population displacement and push millions to the brink in countries across the world.
“We are deeply concerned about the combined impacts of overlapping crises jeopardizing people’s ability to produce and access foods, pushing millions more into extreme levels of acute food insecurity,” said FAO Director General Qu Dongyu. “We are in a race against time to help farmers in the most affected countries, including by rapidly increasing potential food production and boosting their resilience in the face of challenges.”
“We’re facing a perfect storm that is not just going to hurt the poorest of the poor—it’s also going to overwhelm millions of families who until now have just about kept their heads above water,” warned WFP Executive Director David Beasley. “Conditions now are much worse than during the Arab Spring in 2011 and 2007-2008 food price crisis, when 48 countries were rocked by political unrest, riots and protests. We’ve already seen what’s happening in Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru, and Sri Lanka—that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We have solutions. But we need to act, and act fast,” he warned.
According to the report, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen remain at “highest alert” as hotspots with catastrophic conditions, and Afghanistan and Somalia are new entries to this worrisome category since the last hotspots report released in January 2022.
The UN food agencies report said Congo, Haiti, the Sahel region, Sudan and Syria remain “of very high concern” with deteriorating critical conditions—with Kenya a new entry to the list. Sri Lanka, West African coastal countries (Benin, Cabo Verde and Guinea), Ukraine and Zimbabwe have been added to the list of hotspots countries, joining Angola, Lebanon, Madagascar, and Mozambique, which continue to be hunger hotspots.
Although the Philippines is not included in the FAO and WFP hunger hotspots report, there are worrying developments that could threaten the food security of poor Filipinos. For example, even before the Philippine Statistics Authority announced an inflation rate surge to 5.4 percent in May from 4.9 percent in April, Agriculture Undersecretary for Policy, Planning and Research Fermin D. Adriano said the price of locally produced rice may increase by P4 to P6 per kilogram in the fourth quarter as a result of higher production costs and lower output. (Read, “Higher rice production costs seen to spur P6/kilo price hike,” in the BusinessMirror, June 6, 2022).
The government, Adriano said, has two options to cushion the impact of various global economic challenges on domestic rice prices: Increase local production through subsidy and import rice to plug shortfall in supply. Adriano said raising local rice farmers’ productivity is the other option that the government has on table. But doing so, he said, would require a budget of at least P18 billion to subsidize farmers’ fertilizer costs.
“The government really needs to subsidize the fertilizer or else our production would fall. Like what our agriculture secretary is saying, we have to brace for a looming food crisis,” Adriano said.