onsdag 27. april 2022

Ukraine war: Can India feed the world?

Last week, Indian PM Narendra Modi told US President Joe Biden that India was ready to ship food to the rest of the world following supply shocks and rising prices due to the war in Ukraine. Mr Modi said India had "enough food" for its 1.4 billion people, and it was "ready to supply food stocks to the world from tomorrow" if the World Trade Organization (WTO) allowed.

Commodity prices were already at a 10-year high before the war in Ukraine because of global harvest issues. They have leapt after the war and are already at their highest since 1990, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (UNFAO) food-price index.

Russia and Ukraine are two of the world's major wheat exporters and account for about a third of global annual wheat sales. The two countries also account for 55% of the global annual sunflower oil exports, and 17% of exports of maize and barley. Together, they were expected to export 14 million tonnes of wheat and over 16 million tonnes of maize this year, according to UNFAO.