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Food crisis in Haiti. File photo. EFE
The world will experience a greater increase in food prices in the next ten to twelve monthsIf problems such as the scarce supply of fertilizers, the drop in production due to droughts in several countries and the blockade of the sea export of grain from Ukraine are not resolved, experts said today in the < strong>World Economic Forum in Davos.
If it is not possible to resume shipments of loads of cereals and other agricultural products from the port of Odessa, in Ukraine< /strong>“We will be facing a complex problem because the warehouses may be full, but if there are no ships to transport them, we will be able to see situations of hunger around the world,” he anticipated. the head of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley.
“You can imagine what happens when the country that is the supplier of bread to the world, which is capable of feeding 400 millions of people, is at war. It is an absolute crisis”, Beasley said in a discussion at the Davos Forum dedicated to raising ideas to reverse the food crisis.
He argued that the rapid increase in the number of hungry people in the world will generate more destabilization and massive migrations.
On the same panel, the Vice President of Tanzania, Philip Isdor Mpango, admitted that his continent is suffering from the consequences of “bad agricultural policies”, to which must be added the consequences of climate change and the pandemic, which are still being felt in the economic and African social policy.
Among the solutions proposed by They include “investments in irrigation projects, in rural roads and the allocation of land for crops”, as is currently the case. making his country, with young people among the main beneficiaries.
Mpango defended the importance of investing in “improving the variety of seeds”, as well as as in “investing in fertilizers, which can become a turning point”.
On the same problem, the Vice Prime Minister of Vietnam, Le Minh Khai, gave his opinion. that the most important problem to solve is that “global supply chains are restored”, interrupted or slowed down first by the covid-19 pandemic and in the last three months by the war in Ukraine.
For Syngenta’s CEO, Erik Fyrwald, the solution to the current food crisis lies in “growing more food on less land, and we have the technology that can help us do that.”
Considered that the approach taken by the private sector of agriculture would at the same time make it possible to fight against climate change, since “we can achieve higher yields while reducing gas emissions” , a third of which come from this sector globally.
The Tanzanian vice president recalled that there could be more places of food supply if further After the war in Ukraine, the world became interested in solving forgotten conflicts, such as those that have been taking place for several years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in South Sudan, in the Central African Republic and, more recently, in Mozambique.