Climate crisis, Ukraine war, inflation: According to the United Nations World Food Program, there is no end in sight to the hunger crisis this year either.
“With 349 million people affected in 79 countries, hunger has become a conflagration. Around 900,000 of them are fighting for their survival,” said Martin Frick, director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) in Germany, the German Press Agency. Crises such as Russia’s war against Ukraine, climate change or the dramatic price and debt development in poor countries further fueled the hunger crisis.
In addition, fertilizer prices have risen 184 percent in the past two years, which could shrink global yields of wheat, rice, soybeans and corn by 2.4 percent this year. The calories lost could feed 282 million people, it said. “Food would then be scarce and unaffordable for even more people.” In order to prevent more people from starving as a result, more decisive countermeasures must be taken, for example through humanitarian aid, according to Frick.
The effects of the war against Ukraine on agriculture will also be an issue at the meeting of EU agriculture ministers next Monday.
