As Americans Complain about High Gas Prices, Others Face Starvation

 

Around the world, there are pockets of land able to produce food crops well in excess of local demand. Reality impacts these productive areas, often the basis of sufficient and affordable food for other regions that must import foodstuffs to sustain their populations. Primarily population growth, climate change… and war. While inflation has become a political football here, with the incumbent administration taking the blame, it’s hard to avoid the reality that Russia produces almost 12% of the world’s oil and gas, as the other OPEC+ countries – trying to make up for losses during the peak pandemic years – have refused to increase output to keep prices high. Everything that ships is also impacted. If only Republicans really had a plan to control inflation…

But for masses of people in impoverished nations, higher shipping prices and food shortages, are actually killers. Even those able to grow food are finding petroleum-based fertilizers unavailable or horridly unaffordable. Crop yields necessary plummet. Further, sanctions, increased shipping costs, port blockage and land unable to be worked because of wartime conditions have also directly impacted the availability of one of the largest “survival food” categories: grain. “Ukraine and Russia produce about a third of global wheat and barley exports. Three dozen countries rely on them for more than half of their wheat imports. They also produce more than half the world’s sunflower oil, used in cooking and snacks.” Washington Post, May 27th. Ukraine’s farms are reeling from Russian attacks, her harbors are blocked by Russian forces, and Russia’s output faces global sanctions and impaired transportation access.

As Putin tried unsuccessfully with the West – drop your sanctions and we will allow Ukraine grain to be exported – he was actively trying to shift the global food shortage blame to the United States and her allies. Major food importers like India and China have refused to participate in sanctions against Russia to ensure their continued access to Russian fossil fuels and grain. Russia has even offered these large mainstays favorable discounts on those purchases, and both these hugely populated nations have their own shipping and transportation systems. Not so in Africa and other food impaired regions.

Russia has exacerbated the horribles by stealing Ukrainian agricultural tools and equipment… even tons of grain. That satellite picture above shows a Russian ship (the freighter Matros Pozynich) loaded with grain stolen from Ukraine, which had been turned away from several Mediterranean ports, finally docked in the port of Latakia… in Russia-dependent Syria. But as Putin’s war continues, the victims are hardly just those in the battleground.

“Kristalina Georgieva, the International Monetary Fund managing director, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Monday [5/20] that ‘the anxiety about access to food at a reasonable price globally is hitting the roof’ as food prices continue ‘to go up up up’… [In mid-May], United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned of ‘the specter of a global food shortage in the coming months’ without urgent international action.

“The U.N. estimates that in the past year, global food prices have risen by almost one third, fertilizer by more than half and oil prices by almost two thirds… According to U.N. figures, the number of severely food-insecure people has doubled in the past two years, from 135 million pre-pandemic to 276 million today. Now, more than half a million people are experiencing famine conditions, according to the U.N., an increase of more than 500% since 2016.

“In Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, the number of people facing extreme hunger has more than doubled since last year, from roughly 10 million to more than 23 million today, according to the report. Across the three countries, the report notes, one person is likely dying every 48 seconds from acute hunger-related causes stemming from armed conflict, COVID-19, climate change and inflationary pressures worsened by the war in Ukraine.

“In India, a devastating heatwave has upset the nation's wheat harvest, driving up prices around the world for the staple commodity. Earlier this month, as temperatures in the capital of Delhi hovered near 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced a ban on wheat exports. The announcement helped push wheat prices to record levels.

“Wheat prices were already hit hard by the war in Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are some of the world's biggest wheat producers, combining to produce around 25% of global supply. Global wheat prices surged in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They had already risen an estimated 80% in just over a year before December 2021, according to the IMF.” NPR, May 23rd. The bottom line: Millions of people face a slow, agonizing death by starvation because of Putin’s war. However, most are unconcerned with wars in “white European countries”; they just want to survive. Many will not through no fault of their own.

Even as the GOP seems to be relying on “Biden’s inflation” as a rising path to their mid-term prospects, it is important to know that commodities are not priced by single nations, not even the United States; we live in a global marketplace. Even if the United States were able to double its petroleum output tomorrow (which it cannot), it would only represent a minor blip in the world’s price of oil. Sadly, the one constant, as behemoths battle directly or through surrogates and brutal dictators seek raw expansionism to define their “legacy,” is that it is always those at the bottom of the food chain who suffer most.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we must stop complaining about pricing that America alone cannot fix… and find a way to help those who are now more in need than ever before.