FROM POLAND TO INDIA, FOOD SECURITY IS A KEY ELECTION ISSUE

The global food security crisis has been exacerbated by various factors such as war, climate change, and trade tensions. The below highlights the complex interplay between these things on a global scale. Here are the key points:

• The US accused Russia of using food as a weapon in its war against Ukraine, contributing to a global food security crisis.
• Global food costs are rising due to soaring wheat prices after India curbed exports, and extreme weather conditions are threatening production worldwide.
• The war in Ukraine has significantly impacted the supply of key crops, with Russia’s invasion affecting nearly half the world’s supply of sunflower oil and other essential commodities.
• Food insecurity has become a top issue in election campaigns across Europe, Asia, South America, and even the US, with more than 2 billion people heading to ballot polls in populous countries like India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Egypt.
• Governments are implementing protectionist measures to control food inflation, such as export bans and restrictions, to keep food prices from rising too high domestically.
• The return of El Niño is causing nervousness among countries, potentially affecting weather patterns and, consequently, food production and prices.
• The video highlights the political impact of food prices, with examples from India where soaring onion prices can influence elections, and Argentina, where election campaigns are addressing farming and food production issues.
• The discussion also covers the challenges of implementing climate policies in agriculture, as seen in New Zealand’s emissions tax on agriculture and the opposition it faced.
• The global food supply is becoming more volatile due to climate change, environmental degradation, and geopolitical tensions, affecting both low-income and rich countries.
• The video concludes with insights from Professor Tim Benton, who emphasizes the need for a more resilient and sustainable global food system that can address the challenges of dietary health, climate change, and geopolitical instability.

 

Transcript

 

At the United Nations security Council today the US accused Russia of using food as a weapon in its war against Ukraine and in turn creating a global food security crisis. From flying, to driving, to eating, life is suddenly a lot more expensive.

 

Global Food costs are poised to climb even further on soaring wheat prices after India curbed exports, droughts, floods and heat waves are threatening production worldwide just as Russia’s war in Ukraine throttles supply from one of the largest Growers across the globe. Rising inflation, growing trade tensions, extreme weather and war have led to ever higher food prices and in many places shortages of once plentiful staples like wheat and rice.

 

Bloomberg’s Agnieszka De Sousa reports that this problem of food insecurity has now become a top issue in election campaigns in Europe, Asia and South America and even in the US. More than 2 billion people will head to ballot polls between October and May or June and it’s some of the most populous countries. You know India, Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, Argentina and so on. 

 

Later I talked to Chatham House food security expert Tim Benton: it’s not just low-income countries and climate vulnerable countries, it’s also the rich world across the European Union. For example 5 million people a year die from dietary related ill health. 

 

I’m Wes Kosova, today on the Big Take, food is on the ballot. 

 

Aggie, you write that we are starting to hear about food and food insecurity and food politics in elections all around the world, why is food becoming such a big election issue now? I guess we can just go back a little bit and try to understand and look at the global picture right now, I mean we’ve had almost two years of inflation that started with developing countries and spilled over to developed countries. It’s something very sticky, central banks have managed to control to an extent core inflation but it’s the food inflation that is just not going away, it may be easing but it’s not going away. It is a big issue and it’s something that’s visible on supermarket shelves, it’s something very very close to everyone. There are so many food risks out there that politicians, people need to pay attention to and I would summarize it in a couple of words: war, the weather, and export bans. And essentially I mean erratic weather from heat waves, hail, floods have an impact on key crops around the world. Anything from wheat, rice to olive oil and tomatoes.  Even livestock you know at the end of the day livestock needs water, it needs food, it needs grass and even things like milk supply could be affected. And it just depends where you go, you’re going to see the impact, you know at the same time the war in Ukraine has restricted flows of key crops out of the country. Sunflower oil. Ukraine is absolutely a dominant player producer in that market. 

 

Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that country exported nearly half the world’s supply of sunflower oil. Now grocers in the UK and Europe are limiting how much people can buy as those supplies dwindle. Wheat or corn you know all of that has been affected by the conflict and an agreement that was meant to facilitate the flow of the safe passage of those crops out of Ukraine has largely come to an end because of the Russian withdrawal. In Ukraine people are accusing Russia of grossly violating international obligations that comes after the Russian defense Ministry said all ships sailing into ports in the Black Sea would be considered military ships so that’s especially affecting countries that were dependent on Ukraine for their Imports and then you know we’ve got risks from the return of El Niño. 

 

Over three years officially El Niño has developed down in the Pacific. We always watch El Niño. We haven’t seen it play out completely in terms of the true impact we are seeing, little by little, the impact from El Niño. But we know there will be more, there will be more of it and countries are nervous and we see countries in Southeast Asia for example being nervous about it you know all that nervousness what’s going to happen to El Niño, what’s going to happen to the weather, inflation, that need to control food inflation is making governments nervous so they are trying to do something and that’s when protectionism comes in. So they need to control the exports: let’s keep our foods at home so our prices are not too high you know, let’s control the prices through the flow of goods. That’s what governments are trying to do as well and we are seeing it happen in India, the world’s biggest rice exporter. The government of Narendra Modi is clearly nervous about food. India introduced restrictions on exports of rice. Russian missiles are hitting Ukraine and the impact is being felt all the way here in India. New Delhi has been forced to make some tough calls. 

 

India has banned the export of rice and it’s a very big deal because India is the world’s biggest exporter of rice and now it has stopped this has led to panic in the global markets and you’re right that something as simple as the humble onion has huge political effects yes and you wouldn’t expect that from the humble onion. It’s something that people take for granted but governments don’t and just look to India where onions are ubiquitous. Such an important component of people’s diet, and it’s something that soaring prices of onions have the power to shake up the government. They actually can cost politicians their seats and we’ve seen that play out in the past and clearly it’s something that the government of India is very sensitive to and we’ve already seen, even this year, Modi’s government introducing a special export duty on onions so then to keep more onions at home. 

 

It has battled soaring tomato prices. I mean at some point tomato prices have gone up by something like 700%. I mean it was crazy amounts. Restaurant chains like McDonald’s couldn’t even get hold of them. Inflation is still high, it has come down, they have managed to keep it somehow under control, so we’re seeing the signs of easing but we are seeing prices of staples of spices of grains, very very high compared with a year ago. So this is something that for people in a country where there is still plenty of food insecurity, of malnutrition, you know it’s still something that needs to be addressed and the government is clearly trying to do that. 

 

You also write that in 2023 and 2024 there are a lot of elections around the world which is another reason why food has become such an issue. Where are some of the countries where we’re seeing this happen? 

 

More than two billion people will head to ballot polls between October and May or June, and it’s some of the most populous countries you know. India, Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, Argentina and so on. What we’re seeing is governments or political parties, opposition parties are trying to address two issues: one thing is how do we appeal to consumers, anyone that buys food, but then how do we appeal to farmers, still a very powerful political force in many countries. I think, Wes when we spoke a year ago or so and we talked about how powerful farmers can be because there are millions of them and they are lobby groups and they’re quite vocal about their discontent. If there is discontent, farmers will go and protest and show it. One key example is Poland. We’ve seen that in the elections this year discontent among farmers was brewing for months. They weren’t happy about the inflow of grains and other foods from Ukraine – they were concerned it was staying in the country and pushing down the prices and creating competition to them and the government had to eventually respond, so in Poland the ruling party tried to restrict the imports of grains from Ukraine making sure that it does not stay within their country. We’ve had an update since we wrote the story, the ruling party in Poland in fact has lost the elections they did manage to attract the farmer vote but in this case consumers, the city population, turned up – the turnout was really huge compared with any previous election and they lost the vote. So in the end the farmer vote was not enough for the win. 

 

Aggie, you mentioned that when we last talked we were talking about how powerful farmers were and at that time it was about the Netherlands and farmers were very upset about government requirements to reduce emissions from cows in order to meet climate goals and that too had a really big effect across the country. More than a year ago, the government’s decision to curb nitrogen emissions and close many polluting farms led to countrywide protests. Farmers got really really angry when they went to the streets, they burned things, they blocked roads, they went to the Hague – they protested. We did see changes as a result in the Dutch political scene and in fact there were elections held and that Farmer-Citizen Movement party known as BBB (or BoerBurgerBeweging) got the most votes. 

 

Agie, another country you write about that’s facing these questions about food in their elections is New Zealand. New Zealand is an interesting one because they were viewed as this very progressive country with the first ever emissions tax on agriculture – you know the first ever cow tax. We were seeing something happening in farming and finally we’re seeing climate impact from agriculture being addressed by a government. But it wasn’t something popular among farmers, and as the elections started to get closer, politicians started to voice their opinions about it. And the opposition party, in fact during their campaign, said clearly we want to push this emissions goal or emissions tax back until 2030. So the government could not stand still; they had to come up with their own delay. They proposed emissions pricing being delayed towards the end of 2025, now the opposition party won the elections and so we are likely to see a further delay in this policy. It shows that implementing those climate policies in agriculture is not going to be easy. 

 

Agie, you said earlier that a lot of countries want to try to keep their own crops, what they produce in the country, instead of exporting it. But in the case of Argentina, the right politicians are promising to do exactly the opposite. Argentina is kind of an outlier in my opinion because we’ve noted that food has become a more common issue. Addressing farmer needs have become a more common theme in upcoming elections, but Argentina is one of those countries where actually food and farming has mattered for decades so in typically, in those exporting crop, exporting countries like Brazil or Argentina farmers farming food production do matter for governments and they do matter for for elections but in this case what’s interesting is that the candidates, especially the shock front runner during the election campaigns are actually pushing for the opposite. They pushing for liberalizing farming which would actually be quite positive from a global point of view because that would mean more supplies coming out of Argentina so we’re not talking here about protectionism and restricting supplies. We would be potentially be talking about more soy meal, more corn, more beef coming out of Argentina.

 

What are we to take away from all of this? I think the fact that there are many different food risks. Food inflation is not going away, it’s very sticky. The fact that elections are coming likely to lead to policy changes all of that points to a very unstable food security situation in the world. 

 

Agie, always great talking with you. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you so much. 

 

Now, let’s hear from someone who’s studied this problem for years. Professor Tim Benton leads the environment and society program at Chatham House in London and he’s worked on food insecurity issues with the UK governments, the EU and the G20. Tim is someone who thinks about food and food insecurity for a living. 

 

Tim, can you paint us a picture of the world food supply right now? Well we’ve created a globalized food system over the last 40 or 50 years, predominantly since the late 80s which is predicated on producing a very large amount of a relatively small number of highly traded grains; rice, wheat, maize, soy and palm oil and things like that. We have a global system upon which almost everybody relies in some way shape or form so we’ve got this food system which is normally very efficient but as the climate changes and as the demand for food grows and we’re undermining the ability to produce that food, the global food system is also getting more volatile. Shocks from the climate are disrupting supplies. We have seen over the last 15 years or so, significant fluctuations in prices, fluctuations in availability and of course all of those interact with what else is going on in the world. In a sense the climate environmental degradation is making the supply tighter and more volatile at a time where the world is getting tighter and more volatile.

 

And Tim, where are you seeing this most acutely right now? Well everywhere really, I mean it’s not just low-income countries and climate vulnerable countries, it’s also the rich world. I mean across the European Union for example 5 million people a year die from dietary related ill health and many of those are people who are really economically marginalized, eating the worst sorts of diets, lots of calories but not enough nutrition. So given the post Ukraine post COVID cost of living crisis, everywhere in the world has suffered significant food inflation and whether you’re a poor person in a poor country or a poor person in a rich country that really matters. Inflation of food prices of running over 5% is happening in all countries. 60 to 85% of all countries are suffering high food price inflation at the moment, and 86% of low and middle- income countries are having significant food price inflation. 

 

The world’s two largest economies, the US and China, drive a lot of decisions around the world. How important is that to the global food supply? Pretty big but not the only determinant because the major determinant of the kind of globalized food system comes from the major Bread Basket region. Production in the US, in Latin America, in Europe, in Indonesia, in China and Asia, or southeast Asia for rice and so on so we got five major bread baskets responsible for maze, soy, wheat, rice and oil. The major commodities – so all of those countries have a significant leverage on the debate, but nominally at least, they’re governed by the World Trade Organization. The rules were put in place in the late 80s for trade liberalization, but as the World Trade Organization and other multilateral bodies are undermined by governments swinging to the right and pandering to protectionist reasons, the ability to circumvent the trade rules is growing and the US has played a part in undermining the WTO and the production in those Bread Basket regions. And the power of China to dominate some of the markets they’re all part and parcel of the situation but there isn’t one central brain that’s part of the issue with the food system. It is a complex system; that the behavior emerges from every single farmer, every single trader, every single food company, every single consumer making individual choices. And it’s very difficult. It’s not governed and it is very subject to events such as wars, trade wars you know protectionism and COVID interruptions.

 

Port infrastructure getting flooded and a whole range of other things can lead to a kind of domino effect that creates a risk that reverberates around the world because of a supply chain interruption. Given the way the structure of the world and various trading relationships have changed recently, are there policies that can actually help? That’s a question for which we could debate uh for a very long time. There is a need, increasingly, to think about food security, whether you’re in a rich country or a poor country. In terms of the global market, where your food comes from is important, because over the last 40 years or so there has been a lot of a countries saying, well we’re really good at growing this or we’ll grow an excess of that, we’ll export the excess and we’ll buy in what we’re not growing. So trade on comparative advantage only works if the world is stable and if you’re a country, a liberalized trading country like the UK, you rely on the global market to supply your food. If something goes wrong you have to have a plan B, so countries are thinking about their plan B’s. Like how do you build resilience, do you trade with your enemies, do you onshore and develop your local growing capacity or whatever so however you kind of square that circle in terms of the world becoming more fragmented trade becoming more difficult; there are tradeoffs. 

 

This is why again this becomes politically really important if you want greater self-sufficiency. Food availability might go down and prices might go up, but it might support your local farming and if your farming community is really important for you, politically that might be a routine to that debate. But the reality of your answer is we want a calm world that is rules based where everybody plays nicely, but we’re not in that world at the moment and we’re not in that world both because of the geopolitical tensions but also because of climate change. 

 

As you say there’s a lot of facets to this and it paints a very complicated picture. Is there one thing that you’re especially concerned about right now? Well in the short term I’m especially concerned about the next 12 to 18 months. 2023 has obviously been a year of different character when it comes to the weather. On top of which we have a growing El Niño, which typically impacts a swave of countries in the middle of the world. And if you look at the swave of countries in the middle of the world, whether it is Venezuela, Colombia, DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Pakistan all of those countries are teetering on the edge of state fragility. So if we have an El Niño that creates floods and droughts on top of already a super hot world in 2023; hottest year in record, who knows what the food supply impacts will be and what their impacts will be on migration flows, human displacement on global food prices and so on. 

 

Are there any politicians or countries that you think are doing it right or are proposing an alternative that could help this situation? No, but there are emerging shoots I think of hope. So the biggest political challenge is to move to a food system that supplies uh healthy diets, in a sustainable way and that implies shifting the demand side, so shifting what people eat and how much they eat rather than producing an oversupply of some grains that end up contributing to dietary ill health and getting thrown away particularly in the rich world. But within the climate change negotiations particularly, the recognition that food or Food Systems in general contribute about a third of greenhouse gases means that as we are grappling with the carbon debate, so we have a sectoral plan or vision for transport we have a sectoral plan or vision for energy generation we’re having to get a start to grapple with the sectoral vision for Food Systems. 

 

Tim thanks so much for your time this was really fascinating. Thank you Wes, lovely to speak too thanks.