Addressing Inflation Requires Global Food Systems Transformation

With food prices playing such a significant role in inflation, particularly in the Global South, many hoped that the long-awaited grain shipments from Ukraine would start to bring relief from the global food and cost-of-living crisis.

However, the conflict’s continued impact on global wheat and fertilizer markets is just one supply chain instability undermining food security. Endemic structural issues within global food systems mean that food prices are also at the mercy of surging fuel prices, energy shortages, and climate shocks—all of which bring the threat of widespread hunger and poverty to a world still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The world is suffering from recurrent shocks. The key is to act now to protect food systems—not just over the next 12 months, but for the coming decades. Short-term measures are necessary to address today’s food crisis, but they must also be a staging post on the way to longer term resilience that prevents and pre-empts future crises.

Read the full op-ed authored by Marco Ferroni and published by the Diplomatic Courier.

Header photo by A. Cortés/CIMMYT.