Food Crisis & Indexes

Food Crisis & Indexes

Topic: Agriculture

Section: Report and Indices

Context- Russia-Ukraine war can spark a food crisis.

Concept-

Food Crisis facts:

• Russia and Ukraine are import-ant players in the global trade of grains and oilseeds among other agricultural commodities.
• The armed conflict between the two countries has raised concerns over food security for the Middle East and Africa.
• The crisis would spur food inflation and the poor harvest due to dry spells in South America and Indonesia and rising demand for wheat and oilseeds in China and India can worsen the situation.
• In 2020, African countries imported $4 billion worth agriculture produce from Russia.
  • Ninety per cent of imports consisted of wheat and 6 per cent sunflower oil.
• Similarly, Ukraine exported about $2.9 billion of agricultural. commodities to African countries in 2019-20 of which About 48 per cent of imports included wheat, 31 per cent maize, and the balance sunflower oil, barley, and soybeans.
• Russia accounts for about 10 per cent of global wheat production while Ukraine has a 4 per cent share.
• Russia and Ukraine contribute about a quarter of the global wheat exports.
• Russia and Ukraine are important players in corn production and had a 14 per cent share of global maize exports in 2020.
• Also, these two countries lead in sunflower oil production and have a 40 per cent share in exports.
• China is the largest producer of wheat in the world.

Indices by FAO:

• Food Price Index: The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI) is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities. It consists of the average of five commodity group price indices weighted by the average export shares of each of the groups over 2014-2016.
• FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index
• FAO Cereal Price Index
• FAO Dairy Price Index
• FAO Meat Price Index
• FAO Sugar Price Index