To this day, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has lasted for more than two months. This war has affected the surrounding countries and even the world a lot. The most obvious of these is the impact on global food security, which many countries are very concerned about. The U.N. World Food Programme recently said the war had exacerbated global food shortages and that its effects would be "unprecedented since World War II."
It should be known that Russia and Ukraine are the world's most important producers and net exporters of agricultural products, and are important "granaries" in the world. In 2021, Russia and Ukraine rank in the top three of the world's top three exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, and Russia also ranks first in the world in terms of fertilizer exports. In other words, two of the three countries most affecting global food security are at war.
Before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the Ministry of Agricultural Policy expected to sow more than 15 million hectares this year, but due to the war, the current spring sowing area has reached only 1 million hectares, and the total sown area this year is expected to be 7 million hectares, which is half of last year.
In addition, the drastic decline in the agricultural labour force is also a major problem, with many Ukrainian farmers either fleeing their homes or abandoning farming to fight, leaving large areas of land unseed for farming. Some farmland has also been damaged by the war, and the area available for harvest and harvesting have declined significantly. Ukraine could reduce the area sown to food crops by about 40 percent this year, and if yields are lost by 30 percent per hectare, total production could fall by about 60 percent, according to the Ukrainian Agro-Industrial Complex Information Professional Agency.
Compared with Ukraine, Russian food exports have been relatively less affected by the war. However, Russia is the world's leading exporter of nitrogen, phosphate and potash fertilizers. The global supply of fertilizers has also been greatly affected. The rise in fertilizer prices has further led to an increase in international food and feed prices. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicted in March that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict could raise international food and feed prices by 20 percent, triggering a surge in the world's malnourished population.
A few days ago, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said at a news conference that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is exacerbating the crisis in the global food, energy and financial systems. If the Russian-Ukrainian conflict continues, global food prices will continue to rise. The World Bank also warned of "impending food difficulties," saying world energy and food prices would rise sharply this year, with wheat prices likely to rise more than 40 percent to record highs.
So does this thorny problem that the world is facing now have any impact on China's table? The answer is yes, but the impact is not large. China is a country with a large population, a big grain producer, and a big country in grain import. 1.4 billion people consume a lot of food every day. At present, the global prices of grain, energy and edible oil are all rising in an all-round way, which will inevitably have a certain impact on the food security of the mainland.
Nearly 30% of China's corn and barley imports last year came from Ukraine. But the mainland wheat is self-sufficient, and it can find new exporters of corn and barley. In the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, despite the influence of international import factors, China's grain prices have remained generally stable. Judging from the trend, China still has good support for coping with the risk of the global food crisis and maintaining the overall stability of food prices. Although the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will lead to an increase in the cost of importing food, it is unlikely to shake the basic pattern of food security on the mainland.