This year’s wheat harvest in Ukraine, a country that usually accounts for 10 per cent of global wheat exports, is likely to be 42 per cent lower than in 2021. Former Ukrainian agriculture minister Roman Leshchenko says that the crop coverage in 2022 could be less than half pre-war levels, suggesting that the damage to next year’s harvest has already been done. And when the fighting finally ends, repairing farms, soils and storage facilities will take years.

Chemical fertilisers are the lifeblood of modern agriculture, credited with tripling global grain production since the 1960s. A global fertiliser crunch means that now, more than ever, countries increasingly need to provide for themselves.

As soaring prices in the United Kingdom and United States show, even the developed world is not immune to the global effects of the conflict. But, for many countries already teetering on the edge of instability, the situation is desperate.

In Sri Lanka, more than 80 per cent of the population is being forced to skip meals. Similarly, hunger in the Sahel has reached record levels.

Humanitarian outreach has been affected, too. Record-high food prices and soaring transport costs – the result of rich countries scrambling to secure non-Russian energy sources – are proving a deadly combination for the 274 million the UN estimates will need humanitarian aid this year.

A model from The Economist suggests that dozens of countries face a significant increase in “unrest events” in the coming year, while many others could experience economic disruption. The international community needs to act now to prevent a vicious cycle from developing.

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Protesters in Sri Lanka storm PM’s office hours after President Rajapaksa cedes power and flees

Protesters in Sri Lanka storm PM’s office hours after President Rajapaksa cedes power and flees

As World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley says in his foreword to our report, policymakers must not allow the war in Ukraine to overwhelm millions of families trapped in a deadly struggle against hunger. In the absence of silver bullets, the world should embark on an urgent programme of damage mitigation while maintaining a long-term perspective.

Here, multilateral bodies such as the World Trade Organization should encourage major economies to coordinate and release food reserves to prevent further price increases. Governments can also increase funding to humanitarian organisations struggling with soaring procurement and transport costs.

Amid global food insecurity, Thailand’s model shows a way forward

But humanitarian relief alone won’t be enough to prevent the food-pricing crisis from developing into a food-availability crisis. We need to be promoting greater self-sufficiency by encouraging developing countries to diversify their sources of imports, adopt new gene-editing technologies to boost crop yields and increase their fertiliser output.

Many African countries, including Mozambique, Togo, Tunisia and Nigeria, have significant untapped reserves of the raw materials needed to make their own fertilisers and reduce Africa’s reliance on Russian supplies.

Finally, the current crisis highlights the importance of trade coordination. The recently launched African Continental Free Trade Area, for example, promises to boost intraregional trade and provide some protection against future external shocks.

Putin’s weaponisation of food security is not solely responsible for the current crisis, but it has made a bad situation much worse. We face a long-term struggle, because we must tackle not only the Black Sea blockade but also the structural issues that left the world so vulnerable to food-supply disruptions in the first place.