Navigating Global Hunger - The Impact of Conflict on Food Security and Trade Dependencies
Introduction
Global hunger is one of the biggest challenges in our world today, affecting not only individuals' health and well-being but also populations at large. While people are spread across the world, sources of balanced nutrition are not. Today, countries are increasingly dependent on each other for various resources that they consume such as oil, gas and grains. Global trade is one of the largest contributors to foreign exchange and influences international relations. The value of international trade is reaching record levels of nearly USD 32 trillion [UNCTAD News Release, December 2022]1. Export of food is important for the economic development of a country, and similarly import of food is important for the receiving country to keep its population nourished and productive.
Trade dependency is when a country participating in international trade relies on imports to make up a large percentage of its economy and growth. While most lower economically developed countries (LEDCs) depend on resourceful lands to keep their population healthy, it is not always reliable or effective, considering the uncertainty of conflict.
When conflicts arise, they can cause major shortages in our world's food supply chain. Wars and outbreaks dent food production, disrupting the flow of food supply, leading to food insecurity in other regions of the world. If conflicts occur in regions that possess significant food and agricultural resources, they cause a further rippling effect on global food security and economic growth.
The world is intertwined today in the center of geo-political issues. The solutions to the issue of conflicts impacting food security can either be by:
(a) reducing dependencies to any particular region.
1 United Nations. “Key statistics and Trends in International trade 2022.” UNCTAD, 2022, https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/ditctab2023d1_en.pdf. Accessed 7 March 2024.
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(b) pressing for peaceful diplomatic solutions to issues.
(c) ensuring humanitarian issues such as food grain exports stay protected even in conflict-stricken zones.
But are these solutions feasible?
A well-known and unfortunate example of where this is occurring is the largest conflict in Europe since World War II, the Russia-Ukraine conflict that started in February 2022.