5 Signs of an Impending Worldwide Food Crisis

The rising cost of living

You’ve probably noticed already, but food has become extremely expensive. Trips to the supermarket and the gas station are much more expensive, in fact, up to one-third and two-thirds more, as the United Nations have shown.

The Russia-Ukraine war is the main reason for this inflation, which makes it even more difficult to get food at a reasonable price. As families with emerging economies are spending an average of 25% of their budgets on food (up to 40% in sub-Saharan Africa and 60% in Haiti), the rising cost of living might place households with children in life-or-death situations.

As the World Bank Group President David Malpass declared, “food price increases had devastating effects on the poorest and most vulnerable.”

Extreme weather and drought

Extreme weather such as hurricanes and droughts cause nothing but a rapid increase in global hunger, by shrinking harvests and skyrocketing food prices. Many of the world’s poorest countries are solely based on agriculture as their industry, and they eat depending on the harvest.

This implies that when there is no harvest, there’s also no food. The Horn of Africa is in the grips of a major drought after three consecutive rainy seasons failed to materialize. Imagine how it would be like for your income to depend only on the weather, and not the work you put in. Imagine 3 consecutive years of income completely wiped out only because it didn’t rain.

The effect of the pandemic

There’s also the Covid-19 impact that pushed even more people into poverty. Lockdowns devastated so many family livelihoods, but also the economy, not to mention that it completely destroyed supply chains. The results left 1 in 8 people suffering from food insecurity.

Two years later, these families are STILL struggling to put food on the table. “When my mother was unable to find food for us, we would sleep with empty stomachs” according to 11-year-old Emmanuel in Togo. “We only hope that we might find something to eat on the following day, so we can keep on living.”