Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine is hammering Food Security and it is showing up in the prices quoted on supermarket shelves according to the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organisation.
“While global food prices measured in U.S. dollars are falling,local prices measured in national currencies are rising in many countries. As of September and October 2023, for example, more than a third of low-income countries (LICs) and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) experienced food price inflation of more than 15 percent, with food price inflation at 30 percent for LICs in that period,” CSIS said in a February 27, 2024 report.
Describing the invasion as the greatest military-related increase in global food insecurity in at least a century, CSIS predicts that serious ramifications will follow even into the next decade.
“Millions will still be chronically undernourished in 2030 because of Russia’s war,” it said.
Food security has become a major concern globally, and especially in the Caribbean, where the cumulative food import bill is over $6 billion per year. In 2022 food inflation in the Turks and Caicos Islands crossed the 30 percent mark.
The 25 by 2025 initiative launched by CARICOM is an effort to reduce the regional bill by 25 percent and is a testament to the growing concern about food prices and food security.
The CSIS is warning that even when prices seem to go down there are still concerns
“Receding global food prices mask an ongoing global food security crisis– low-income-countries and lower-middle-income countries have relatively less fiscal space to support household-level food security, having depleted their national budgets during the Covid-19 pandemic, and are less able to afford the cost of imports,” it says.
Just days before the CSIS report was published, during the 46th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, Irfaan Ali, Chairman of CARICOM and President of Guyana, used his opening speech to highlight the need for more work to be done to eradicate hunger and malnutrition.
The President revealed 1.3 million more Caribbean residents were affected by food insecurity in 2023 than the year prior. He blamed the alarming number on increased costs for fertilizer, and imported inflation. Ali described it as an ‘alarming number.’
The 25 by 2025 plan was highlighted as a focal point of the regional conference as countries continue to pencil out ways to save cash as food insecurity continues and food prices fluctuate globally.
