The return of the third horseman
The Ukraine War is having dozens - hundreds - of follow-on impacts across the world, with the most dramatic about to be felt in the world of food. Whatever you think will happen, the reality is almost certainly worse.
Let’s start with a point of reference:
In 2010, dry weather across Western Siberia prompted concerns about the Russian wheat crop. In preparation for a poor harvest, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered temporary export limitations for wheat, Russia’s primary agricultural product. Within weeks global wheat prices had doubled; Prices tripled in Russia’s primary export market, the Middle East. Those increases contributed to the series of protests, riots, coups, revolutions and wars we now know collectively as the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War.
What’s happening this time around is far, far worse. Roughly three weeks ago the Russian army poured across Russia’s western frontier into Ukraine. As viewed from an agricultural point of view, the world’s largest wheat exporter invaded the world’s fourth-largest wheat exporter. That alone condemns the Middle East to its most volatile and violent period in at least the last century.
Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of the story.