International organizations are calling for multilateral cooperation on food security
In the face of increasingly severe global food security issues, a number of international organizations have taken measures or put forward plans recently, increasing financial assistance for production, strengthening multilateral coordination, calling for an end to export restrictions, and easing pressure on agricultural supplies and rising food prices.
International organizations stepped up their response
Guterres said at a global ministerial meeting on food security held at the UN headquarters in New York that the current level of global hunger has reached a new high. The number of people severely undernourished has doubled in just two years, from 135 million before the pandemic to 276 million today.
Guterres noted that over the past year, global food prices have risen by nearly a third, fertilizer prices by more than half and oil prices by nearly two-thirds. Social protection systems need to reach everyone in need, and developing countries must have access to liquidity so that they can provide protection to everyone in need.
Guterres said the United Nations is closely watching the prospects for global food security and pushing the international community to take immediate measures. "The food crisis knows no borders and no one country can overcome it alone. The only chance of lifting millions of people out of hunger is urgent and united common action."
The UN food and Agriculture Organisation has proposed a global food import facility to help countries cope with rising food prices. The facility, which is strictly on-demand and is only available to net low - and lower-middle-income food importers and selected beneficiaries by the International Development Association, is expected to reach nearly 1.8 billion people in 61 of the world's most vulnerable countries. The Fund has designed smart trigger lending conditions that will act as an "automatic stabilizer" in future funding activities. Eligible countries would have to promise to increase investment in agriculture to reduce the need for future imports.
The supply gap is likely to persist
Governments are trying to fill gaps in food supplies and ease tight supply and demand.
President Joe Biden announced measures to boost U.S. agricultural production, including increasing the number of counties eligible for double-season crop insurance by 681 to 1,935 nationwide. Reducing farmers' production costs, expanding the use of key products, and simplifying application procedures for farmers through "precision agriculture" and other technical assistance to improve crop efficiency; Increase federal investment in domestic fertilizer production from $250 million to $500 million.
However, the policy impact is hard to come by immediately. U.S. farmers are expected to plant less spring wheat and more soybeans this year, resulting in 2 percent fewer acres of spring wheat than in 2021, the USDA forecast in April. The total area planted to wheat is expected to increase by just 1% in 2022, the USDA said.
'There's no way to make up the shortfall this year,' said Mark Zuckerberg, senior economist at CoBank, an agricultural lender. He also said acreage bottlenecks, high prices for other crops and drought could limit U.S. wheat production growth for a long time.
In Europe, Ireland launched a nearly $11 million program in March to encourage farmers to grow more crops, such as wheat, oats and barley, in hopes of reducing the country's dependence on imported food.
The European Commission has also recently taken action to strengthen global food security, such as temporarily allowing farmers to grow crops on fallow land. The Commission also backed a reduction in the blending of biofuels based on food crops, saying the measures would help farmers devote more land to food production and increase planting of crops such as corn and sunflowers.
Preventing export restrictions is a top priority
The industry is calling for a precautionary measure against the spread of export restrictions, which have exacerbated global food tensions as several countries restrict agricultural exports.
Qu Dongyu, director-general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, recently publicly called on governments to "refrain from restricting exports to exacerbate food price inflation and undermine trust in global markets".
Aditya Mattoo, the World Bank's chief economist for East Asia and the Pacific, said that against the backdrop of rising world food prices, restricting food exports will not help ease domestic prices, but will further push up global food inflation and exacerbate the crisis faced by some food-importing countries.
According to ifPRI, 23 countries have imposed export restrictions, close to the 28 that did so at the height of the food price crisis in 2008.
Mattoo believes that restrictions on food exports by some countries could lead to new controls by more countries to curb domestic prices, further raising global prices and reducing the efficiency and equity of food distribution. In 2008 and 2011, when global food prices soared, countries introduced more than 80 food trade interventions, which instead contributed to a further 13-15 per cent rise in global prices, Mr Mattoo said.