Under the influence of multiple factors such as epidemics, wars, locust plagues and climate change, the problem of food supply is becoming a difficult problem for all countries in the world. Recently, the United Nations World Food Program issued a warning: Humanity is facing the "biggest food crisis after World War II". Even in China, where grain reserves are relatively abundant, the recent silage wheat scandal has caused controversy in public opinion. There is a tense atmosphere surrounding the global food issue.
The "food crisis" is even worse for the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Before the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out, the economic depression and food shortage were already destroying the lives of Afghans. News at the beginning of the year pointed out that some poor people had to sell their kidneys to survive, and local human trafficking was worsening.
Although Afghanistan can currently rely on food imports from Pakistan and India, and does not need to buy directly from Russia or Ukraine, the war between Russia and Ukraine will still cause international food prices to rise sharply, and the World Food Program will spend more money to purchase food every month. It will also be forced to reduce the coverage of aid.
Iran's harvest this year is not good, and it is directly dependent on exports from Russia and Ukraine, but the government is obviously unable to control the price of living things. There were a variety of official subsidies to keep food prices in check, but many of these subsidies were recently removed by the new president, Rahey. In the past two months, the price of food in Iran has continued to rise. People first reduced their meat consumption to save money. Now, the price of ordinary pasta has continued to rise. The price of milk eggs can reach 300% of the original price, and there are many complaints.
Many West Asian and African countries also depend on Russian and Ukrainian agricultural products. The per capita consumption of wheat in Arab countries is particularly high. Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat, and about 70% of its imports come from Russia and Ukraine; in Lebanon, where the port barn explosion occurred in 2020, up to 90% of wheat and edible oil came from. Russia and Ukraine. These countries are trying to import food from India or other countries, so they are not as stuck as Iran, but the price of food is still difficult to avoid. Even countries like Nigeria in West Africa, which are not as dependent on wheat for their diets, are feeling the rise in the price of all types of food.
For more than a year, Ethiopia in East Africa has been locked in a civil war between government forces and the rebel "Tigray People's Liberation Front". Although the fighting has subsided recently, the Tigray region, the focus of the conflict, is still far from returning to normal life. The disrupted economic production and the displacement of people have made it necessary for the entire region to continue to rely on external food aid. For now, the central government is no longer preventing aid from entering the Tigray region as it did during the war, but a global shortage of food supplies is set to increase the pressure on aid efforts.
Under the impact of the food crisis, all countries in the world will pay more attention to "food security" or "food sovereignty", but this is not the same for all countries, and it may also lead to hostility for food. While there is a need for greater emphasis on locally based food production, there is still a need to rely on an international food exchange system on this basis. The real problem is how to peacefully cooperate with people from afar to solve problems based on their respective ecological foundations. In early March, the United Nations announced that next year would be designated as the "International Year of Multigrains". This is because in the development of modern agriculture, many traditional grain crops that can improve food security have been neglected, and the diversity of cereals around the world has been rapidly lost, giving way to the commercialization of agricultural products and the single-crop industry.
Although modern technological innovations have increased the yield of mainstream crops and fed a large population, niche grains have their own advantages in terms of health, nutritional content and food security, and they have received increasing attention. From quinoa and amaranth of Native Americans, teff and fonio rice of Africa, to crops such as sorghum that are more familiar to Chinese, agriculture in various places has begun to pay attention to grains again, and has also been successfully promoted internationally, which may bring A more diverse food future.
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