A man carries bread while people line up in front of a bakery in Sidon, southern Lebanon, on April 12, 2022. Among the devastating consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the destruction of global food supplies.AZIZ TAHER / Reuters
In the clinical language of emergency food relief, the desperate daily reality of hunger is reduced to numbers on a scale of one to five.
Those who face some difficulty in eating or meeting basic food needs are measured as a first- or second-level crisis. Widespread malnutrition is level three or four. This is the last group of countries where international aid organizations are involved.
This numbered system, used worldwide to categorize food insecurity, is designed to warn and hopefully prevent a level five disaster or famine. Level five, in the so-called integrated phase classification, is a measure reserved only for the most severe situations – when extreme malnutrition, starvation and eventually death become commonplace.
But as the war in Ukraine continues, it is a measure that is likely to be implemented by more and more countries and with appalling frequency.
Among the devastating consequences of the Russian invasion is the destruction it has inflicted on global food supplies. After Ukraine and Russia – both major food producers – are suddenly cut off from global markets, large sections of the world’s population are cut off from basic foodstuffs. World food prices have skyrocketed.
In recent weeks, some of the world’s major organizations – the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Food Program (WFP) and the World Bank – have sounded the alarm. And it’s only expected to get worse. About 44 million people worldwide, according to the WFP, are currently on the verge of a fifth-level famine.
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The impact could be catastrophic: widespread mortality, the devastating effects on global health in a world still rocked by a pandemic, and potential disruptions to mass migration and political unrest.
“I always think about who is most affected and most vulnerable,” said Warren Dodd, a professor of global health at the University of Waterloo, about the consequences of such a crisis in Canada. “I don’t think we’re all going to have to worry the same.”
But just because this country is likely to be spared the worst does not mean we can afford complacency, he said. As Canada struggles to figure out how to help, this raises a bigger, more fundamental question: What role can we play in fixing a global food system that increasingly seems disrupted?
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Another term borrowed from the world of food aid is “the three Cs”.
This is how humanitarian organizations describe the current situation, which is unfolding after years of other crises: COVID, climate change and now the consequences of the war.
The crisis is exacerbated by the fact that many of the countries that depend most on Ukraine and Russia for food are among the poorest in the world. Among them, Ukraine and Russia produce about a quarter of the world’s wheat exports and are major suppliers of other major cereals and oils. About 50 countries – many in the Middle East and Africa – rely on the region for food.
Approximately 80 percent of Lebanon’s wheat comes from Ukraine. In the Middle East, food spending has risen more than 300 percent in the past year. Yemen, already facing a third-tier food security crisis, imports 97 percent of its grain – most of Ukraine and Russia.
The region also produces other key agricultural products, such as fertilizers, which raises the price of a crucial raw material for farmers around the world.
“What we are seeing is another shock at the top of a very fragile system,” said Andy Harrington, chief executive of Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFB), a charity that provides food aid around the world.
Organizations, including the CFB, have already felt its impact. In Syria and Lebanon, their purchasing power has fallen sharply, with prices rising to 35% in the last two months. In Ethiopia, a food basket that cost $ 38 three years ago now costs $ 60.
“Who should we go to and say, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t give you the same rations we managed to give you last month?'” Mr Harrington asked.
“We are talking about families who are experiencing severe hunger and hunger.”
The World Food Program predicts that if the war continues beyond the end of April, another 47 million people will face severe famine. That’s over 276 million who are already in this difficult situation.
At first glance, Canada’s potential to help may seem clear. As a major producer of many of the same products that are now facing shortages – wheat, oilseeds and fertilizers – Canadian farmers are facing calls to increase production to help alleviate shortages.
But that could further complicate matters, experts say.
This is a fact that the CFB can confirm. Founded in the 1980s, the Winnipeg-based charity initially started with a simple idea: Canadian farmers had surplus crops and were looking for ways to share those crops. But after decades of delivering food, hiring tankers to transport grain and other products around the world, they realized the shortcomings of this system.
“It wasn’t the most effective way to do things,” Mr Harrington said.
In addition to logistical challenges, Canadian cultures have often been unsuitable for local communities. And often the influx of imported products would have an adverse effect on local industries.
“We started destroying local businesses as a result of the sudden dumping of our grain,” he said.
There is also the question of time. Most planting decisions on Canadian farms for the year – decisions that took months – have long since been finalized.
Instead, the best approach to an immediate disaster is funding, humanitarian organizations say. Charities such as the CFB have called on the Canadian government to increase funding for aid. They also want such funding to be linked to future food inflation.
Donations also help, said Julie Marshall, a Canadian spokeswoman for the World Food Program.
“[Cash] is more efficient and effective. It’s just that, “she said. “Very often food delivery can cost as much as the food itself. So let’s buy it on the spot. “
But this is only the immediate catastrophe.
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For Lenore Newman, the timeline begins in 2019. Then forest fires in Australia devastated the harvest and killed more than a billion animals.
“Since then, there has not been a time when our food system has not fallen into crisis,” said Prof. Newman, director of the Institute of Food and Agriculture at Fraser Valley University. And with each crisis, she said, global food systems disintegrated and then collapsed.
In 2020, there was a pandemic that led to widespread blockages, labor shortages and disrupted supply chains. In Canada, this was quickly followed by a “heat dome” in British Columbia and catastrophic floods – both of which devastated farms and caused chaos in transport corridors. Many of these supply chains are still hesitant.
This, she said, begs the question: Why else would a healthy system have such difficulty coping?
For Prof. Newman, the answer requires more in-depth research. Climate change, she said, has made it clear that our existing systems are no longer sustainable. The basic assumptions on which our food system is based – globalization, long supply chains and cheap labor – no longer make sense.
“We must at least begin to believe that the age of globalization is receding, at least in terms of food,” she said.
How the fragile food supply chain in Canada is breaking
Countries like Canada, she said, should instead focus on shorter supply chains. On local production and regionally justified, intensive agriculture.
“It’s an age-shaking change.”
Prof. Newman says this will require technology: speeding up plans to move to indoor agriculture. Instead of importing fruits and vegetables from California and Mexico, she said, we need to build greenhouses and vertical farms that can feed communities across the country.
Making these changes at the local level could also help the global system, she said.
“If we can make technology work in our conditions, which are very harsh, they will work almost anywhere. We can spread this experience around the world. “
Groups such as CFB are already working to support smallholder farmers worldwide. In developing countries in Africa and Asia, CFB is partnering with smallholder farmers to develop climate-sustainable practices and diversify local food systems.
“This is the ultimate goal,” said Professor Dodd of the University of Waterloo, “for Canada to support not only emergency food and humanitarian aid … but long-term solutions – in thinking about how Canadian experience and resources can be used.” to build more sustainable local food systems. “
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Another word that is often found in conversations about the current food crisis with aid organizations: inequality.
Over the past few months, Evan Fraser has used images of political unrest in the Middle East a decade ago to illustrate the role inequality plays in the current crisis – and the potential consequences of ignoring such inequalities.
After a wave of cataclysms in Tunisia in 2010 swept the region in what will become known as the Arab Spring, bread prices initially drew protesters to the streets. As such, the unrest has become synonymous with images of protesters waving baguettes, aish and kesra.
In his research on civil unrest, Prof. Fraser finds that such circumstances exist again and again: political instability and extreme inequality – often symbolized …
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