From the shopping basket in Europe to the UN General Assembly that is being held this week in New York, the food crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has its echo around the world. At more than 400 million people that depended directly on the ‘europe barn‘ to eat is compounded by the fact that Russia, world’s leading exporter of fertilizerhas decided to turn off the tap as a result of the economic sanctions, and this is going to have a direct impact on what is going to be the first major cereal harvest season after the start of the conflict on February 24.
This crisis is right now one of the priorities on the agenda of the UN General Assembly being held this week in New York, as the consequences of the war for the food sector have threatened to famines to the most vulnerable countries and put in check the pockets of the citizens of the first world due to inflation.
Spanish farmers, who are at the gates of the sowing time, they are already considering what to do to guarantee their harvests. What they decide, and what they can do, depends not only on the quality of the product, but also on the precio when their products reach the market.
“Be careful playing with the bread, this is not nonsense. There are many farmers like me who, less than a month after planting, are considering whether to do it or not. And, some of those who do, maybe they do it without fertilizer, which means harvest half of normal“, assures José Roales, national head of Herbaceous Crops of the Coordinator of Farmers and Ranchers (COAG).
The rise in prices since the invasion of Ukraine has been reflected in a increase in collateral costs to its activity such as energy or fertilizer.
According to COAG, the cost of food production in Spain has increased on average and 40%. Of course, while the price of products such as fuel has grown by 90% or that of animal feed by 38%, that of fertilizers it has done and 150%. This increase, which has not yet been reflected in the label that consumers see when they go shopping, could begin to be felt more clearly from the next harvest.
“Less fertilizer, fewer hectares harvested and less production inevitably translate into less grain on the market and prices going up. Cheap food is gone. We are talking about more and more more people who will not be able to buy such basic food such as a liter of milk or a loaf of bread,” warns Roales.
Reluctance to import from Russian companies
The United States and the European Union, on the one hand, and Russia on the other, accuse each other of being responsible for blocking the export of Russian fertilizers to the rest of the world. Although the UN has not made a statement, it has recognized the difficulties that Russian companies are encountering to export their product.
That is why, upon his arrival in New York last weekend, Josep Borrell, head of European diplomacy, decided to meet with the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, to guarantee that the 27 are not putting any obstacles to imports of Russian fertilizers, according to Efe. Russia, however, insists that both the EU and the United States are limiting access to their markets, a narrative the Western bloc hopes to counter during this week’s General Assembly.
Despite the fact that the community market does not directly penalize the importation of this type of product, the truth is that they are being produced reticence in dealing with Russian export companies for fear of possible future sanctions, so it is the job of the EU to try to provide security in this regard. In the words of Borrell himself during a meeting with journalists in New York on Monday, it is about “preventing the lack of fertilizers this year from meaning more hungry the next“.
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The problem for Europe is that not only was it dependent on Russian fertilizers before the war, but the crisis of the energy is also limiting your own ability to be self-sufficient in this matter.
At the end of August, the largest fertilizer factory in the worldlocated in Norway, announced the 50% cut in production of nitrogenous fertilizers and ammonia-based urea in Europe. The reason: the “record prices” that the electricity needed to produce was setting. In the United Kingdom and Poland, three other plants announced their temporary cessation of activity for the same reason.