"Until there is commitment and a plan to ensure stability within our food supply, no weapon sale nor trade embargo is going to make things better."
By Justin Howard
One of the greatest accomplishments to our food system is its elaborate and innovative supply chain: its network of ships, trucks, planes, and people that ensure everything we want to eat shows up “just in time.” However, every elaborate system has its flaws, and in the last two years a myriad of them have become exposed—first by the COVID-19 outbreak and now with the war in Ukraine. These events have shown that feeding people is more important than we ever could have imagined, and it’s getting harder to do.
Disrupting the food supply chain by shutting off grain imports from Ukraine and Russia should be taken very seriously. It’s more dangerous than the Ever Given log jammed in the Suez Canal. Moreover, it could easily upset the role fragile democracies play in shaping the world. Therefore, we must consider the role current grain shortages will have on political and social stability throughout the world, and what historical lessons the US and other global leaders should be taking to avoid food-related catastrophes in the near future.
When Ukraine’s Breadbasket Went Offline
On February 23, 2022, I was up late when the prompts began to roll in over my Instagram binge. Al Jazeera, The New York Times, and the Associated Press were all saying that Russia had escalated their conflict with Ukraine. Putin was moving to take more of the country after their long standoff following the annexation of Crimea in 2014. History was unfolding before my eyes.
Shaken awake, I felt an immediate rush of emotions—anxiety, fear, dread. A profound “uh-oh” took over my mind. Ukraine is known for growing wheat. A lot of wheat. Decidedly, Ukraine is the fifth largest exporter on the global market. Honestly, it was very hard getting to sleep knowing that the world was about to face one of the worst food shortages in collective memory.
Ukraine has spent a large portion of its history as the “breadbasket of Europe.” Its grain has fed the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ruso Kieve’s, and even the Romans for several millennia. The nation’s fertile lowlands along the Dnipro river valley gives it leverage to grow and export a great deal of grain and vegetables. These exports go a long way in feeding the world, so much so that Ukraine has been a key player in the UN’s plan to curb global hunger by 2030. Ukraine’s grain feeds Southeast Asia and North Africa, regions impacted by historic droughts, flooding, or socio-political unrest and violence.
“Ukraine is in a blind spot of agricultural research,” states Diana Mincyte during a lecture on the political fallout of the Ukrainian invasion, “and the historical failures lay squarely at the feet of the USSR, which is Russia.” Planning for the future of our food system is already difficult, and with Ukraine focusing its resources toward self-preservation, the expanding shortfall of grain is creating worry for economists and food scholars across the globe. The immediate impacts are burdening the poorer nations along Ukraine’s border, where a never ending influx of refugees are adding weight to nutritionally threadbare communities.
Russia also has skin in this game as the largest grain grower and exporter in the world. Their exports make up about 18% of the global supply, and when you add this percentage with Ukraine, the two fulfill 25% of the world’s wheat consumption. Western nations and NATO members have significantly shut down Russian trade (including fuel and fertilizer), hoping to put a $8.4 billion hole in Putin’s war machine. However, they failed to consider who is going to step up and fill the void left by sanctions and embargoes.
“It comes down to three things,” Carolyn Dimitri, a food systems and economics professor at NYU stated in a resiliency lecture, “food, fuel, and fertilizer; it’s hard for an economy to work without these items.” Even though the US and its allies believe that withholding money from Russia will get their point across, it’s growing clearer by the day that sanctions are no longer as motivational as they hoped. There's also the added liability of Russia filling in the food gaps where the western traders have failed to provide a solution, which could alter the trajectory of global politics for generations.
Since western nations cut off potash, crude oil, and other raw materials needed for their own domestic production, there are questions as to how this current embargo will impact the long-term needs of the US and its trade partners. As of the posting of this article, the current inflation rate for food has surpassed 8%, and it hasn’t been this high since 1981. As our nation heads into a highly contentious election cycle, it’s almost hair raising to think how these domestic failures regarding a global food system will be utilized by extreme conservatives in the coming months. Historically, food shortages and insecurity have spearhead many political movements, and the exploitation of fear is highly motivational. Geopolitical fallout may very well be imminent.
As the war in Ukraine reaches into the summer months, the true consequences of these grain shortages will set in, making political instability more frequent. These political actions should serve as cautionary tales. With or without contemporary farming techniques, the stability of our global food system relies on many actors playing their part. Repeated failures of nations to come together and manage food shortages, including inflation and drought, suggests that resilience—the ability for the food supply to withstand shocks and failures—has never been part of the plan.
The Historical Lesson of Bread and Apathy
The French revolution is a distinct example of what grain shortages can dismantle. The collapse of the French monarchy was caused by several institutional failures, but the most profound would be the skyrocketing cost of bread. Europe was suffering multiple shortages of grain throughout the 18th century due to several harsh winters and punctuated droughts. This, coupled with a ballooning population, created the perfect storm of popular unrest.
Leading up to the revolution, there were multiple instances of flour shortages, known as the “Flour Wars.” Bakers were cutting sawdust into their bread to save on expense, while the average peasant spent at least half of their income on food—and that was in a good year.
The French ruling class squandered the wealth of the empire while grain costs rose 88%. Peasants were soon priced out of the basic commodity of bread. This level of negligence by the State fueled animosity against the elite, and the monarchy was soon deposed and liquidated. However, the ruling classes returned with the rise of Napoleon, who, having learned from the mistakes of the past, resolved food security for the nation by leveraging advances made during the Industrial Era and introducing the potato into the food supply. However, Napoleon also took advantage of France’s weakened state, and after setting himself up as the new emperor, ran a brutal campaign to seize control of Europe. This hubris financially and morally devastated France well into the 19th century.
To defer to Marx, not every revolution is optimistic.
Similarly, in 2010, Tunisian farmers were being hassled by the police for not paying taxes on their food stalls. The small African nation had been plagued by several years of drought, and a vending farmer eventually snapped. Under the pressure to feed himself, keep his business and his land, in futile anger, he set himself on fire. This act sparked the revolution we now refer to as the Arab Spring, a series of events and unrest that resulted in both institutional collapse and reformation throughout North Africa and the Middle East.
What made this revolution unique was its spill over into and influence upon neighboring countries in the region. Morocco’s king dissolved some of his power and expanded the strength of the parliament. Libya liberated itself from Gadafi, and Egypt ended the charade of Hosni Mubarak. These punctuated revolutions maintained several tenets: the cost of food was too high, there was never enough of it, and the people were not being paid enough to buy it. Leaders tried to explain away the failures, and they usually blamed them on poor environmental conditions, allowing nature to take blame for their fifty-year, poor management of resources. More often than not, along with environmental hardship, the state is mutually culpable.
Grain Supply in Asia and Africa Is Precarious at Best
Currently, Egypt is one of a small handful of nations delicately managing and maintaining its power, even after the events of the Arab Spring over ten years ago. Part of this mild stability is the government's steady increase of grain imports, 70% of which exclusively comes from Ukraine, Russia, and Romania. However, Egypt is feeling the weight of distrust within its population, and food shortages due to the crisis in Ukraine could lead to another domino of political events, destabilizing the region once more.
Moving further east, Afghanistan is teething on the brink of famine, and Indonesia’s attempt to mitigate shortages have backfired. The nation is expecting an 80% drop in rice production this year. According to the UN reports on global hunger, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Yemen are all under extreme pressure to fill the grain gap. The same UN report also stated, “These trends are likely to continue in Myanmar, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central Sahel, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, the northern parts of Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Mozambique.”
"That sound you hear is a rolling political boil."
It is important that the West does everything it can to ensure Ukraine’s success in warding off Russian advances. On May 11th, The House approved $40 billion in military aid to Ukraine, but it is still failing to address the ratcheting issues of Ukraine’s grain shortages. All the while, global democracies are backsliding as inflation and food prices go unchecked, and the buying power of their citizens shrivels up to enrich the already wealthy.
What Russia supplies to the global food chain is the red herring of this conflict. As easy as sanctions may look to try and influence the behavior of a national leader, it also diminishes trust in western models of democracy to fix the ills of the world—that is to say, when food is held ransom to score political points. We really need to demand more from leaders to no longer ignore what’s happening in grain’s global supply chain. They need not look beyond our own backyard to see the effects. This baby food shortage is our first hurdle.
Until there is commitment and a plan to ensure stability within our food supply, no weapon sale nor trade embargo is going to make things better. The world is too interconnected to presume that cutting a nation off from the world will wish away the bad actor. As the US pushes ahead without any tangible plan to solve food inflation, we should ramp up pressure on agricultural and other food production legislation. This legislation should insist on more resilient methods within our food supply chain and insulate it from the present dangers of global warming and political conflict. Without putting in the work to ensure lawmakers do their part, we can only expect more war, more violence, and failures of all the institutions we hold dear.
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Justin Howard is a first-year grad student from Las Vegas, Nevada. With a background in activism, anthropology, and law, his research centers on food rituals framed by human behavior, gender and sexuality, and more recently: the supply chain. You will usually find him on a park bench watching people.
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