Posted on August, 25, 2022 at 06:45 am
Food prices are squeezing consumers all over the world as staples become out of reach and people adapt by buying less nutritious food. The Food and Agriculture Organization has proposed a Food Import Financing Facility to help the 62 hardest-hit nations ensure their populations can access food. And FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero says the facility needs to happen “extremely fast.”
Although FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu presented the facility to assembled G-20 finance ministers last month, along with International Monetary Fund officials, the U.N. agency has not yet heard back on whether the proposal will be taken up.
I haven’t heard back either — IMF didn’t respond to my request for comment about their consideration of a food import facility and if or when they might decide to establish it.
FAO wants IMF to house the facility so it can easily be incorporated with other lending activities. The U.N. agriculture organization will provide its specialized data to help compute appropriate levels of financing.
“If we give them a loan to pay two years later, we’re talking about a $1 billion subsidy, which is nothing,” Torero says. “But this will at least help them to cope for a short period of time.”
He also warns about the dangers of high fertilizer prices, which could lead farmers to change their behavior by abandoning cheaper but vital staple crops for more profitable ones. This could reduce the availability of rice, which has thus far not been affected by shortages caused by the war in Ukraine.
”We need to be very careful with the rice commodity,” Torero said
FAO: Food import financing needed to help countries in crisis
While some are looking to Latin America and the Caribbean to help meet the world’s food needs, the region is also struggling with its own high fuel, food, and fertilizer prices. WFP’s LAC Regional Director Lola Castro tells Devex how the crisis is affecting her organization’s operations — and how a $300 million budget deficit is affecting their ability to respond.
Q&A: What the food crisis means for Latin America (Pro)
+ This Q&A is part of a Devex Pro series on how organizations are responding to the global food crisis. Not yet a Pro member? Sign up now and start your 15-day free trial.
That’s the proportion of Africa’s fertilizer needs that are currently being met, according to Douglas Kerr, the vice president at the International Fertilizer Development Center. He calls it “an appallingly low number” — but points out that it also obscures huge inequities on the continent. While some countries, particularly in North Africa, are fertilizer secure, “countries like Malawi only have about 11% of their fertilizer needs met,” he says. The price of mineral fertilizer was already high even before Russia invaded Ukraine and has since spiked even further.
Kerr cautions that transitioning to organic fertilizer wouldn’t solve this problem. “The idea of completely getting away from mineral fertilizers is a nonstarter” because of the impractically large quantities of organic matter that are needed to replace it. He estimates that around four metric tons of manure would be needed to replace a 50 kilogram bag of mineral fertilizer.
Food crisis: Mineral fertilizers 'here to stay,' says IFDC (Pro)
Isobel Coleman spoke to reporters during a press briefing last week, stressing the progress that has been made in getting Ukrainian commodities out of the country. She said that Ukraine normally would have exported as much as 6 million metric tons of wheat, corn, sunflower oil, and other grain in the first month after the Russian invasion. In reality, it only exported about 100,000 metric tons. At this point, about 2.5 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain go out each month, exiting by land routes or down the Danube River.
While she cautioned the deal with Russia to allow Ukrainian grain out could be compromised at any moment, she sounded optimistic about WFP’s increased access. WFP has been the single largest buyer of Ukrainian grain for the last five years, and now the next 150,000 metric tons funded by USAID is on a ship en route to the Horn of Africa. Coleman said some will be stored in Djibouti for distribution immediately after, if needed.
The ship is currently in the Mediterranean Sea headed toward the Suez Canal. You can track its progress here if you find international shipping tracking as fascinating as I do!
The U.N. is working with the U.S. and the EU to remove obstacles such as shipping, insurance, and finance to get Russian food and fertilizer to global markets. [Al Jazeera]
Women and girls in Ethiopia’s Tigray region are reportedly turning to sex work to stave off hunger. [The Guardian]
An investigation found that Marine Stewardship Council-certified tuna fishing vessels are violating sustainable fishing practices. [The Hill]
Source: Devex