Putin's Famine

One of the many insidious consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the global food shortage and potential famine that it will precipitate. Jim Geraghty writes about it at National Review. He quotes Senator Roy Blunt (R., MO):

You can find different numbers on this, but roughly 25 percent of all the wheat exports in the world come from Ukraine and Russia, about 20 percent of all the corn exports in the world. 90 percent of the sunflower cooking oil comes from there, and a lot of fertilizer comes from there right now from Ukraine, which is the bigger partner in that food distribution of the two countries.

And nothing is coming out of Ukraine. Nothing is coming out of the port at Odessa. Nothing is coming out of the port at Mariupol and hasn’t since the Russian invasion began.

This has huge impact on the whole world but particularly on Africa, food in Ukraine, food in Africa. What’s in the silos in Ukraine right now is not getting out. And Ukrainian farmers aren’t getting crops planted for this year.

Geraghty adds this important note:

Keep in mind, even if the Russian invasion ended tomorrow — and it won’t — there’s still the issue of the hundreds of anti-ship mines now floating around in the Black Sea, a few of which have ended up drifting into the territorial waters of Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania. It’s not going to be safe to send cargo ships through those waters for a long time.

Moreover,

But the global fertilizer shortage is likely to reduce crop yields in a lot of places, which means we may be dealing with a worse problem in the coming months and years. Using less fertilizer usually translates into fewer crops.

Nor are we immune to the consequences of this problem here in North America:

The cost of the fertilizers farmers across Mid-Michigan use has doubled, and in some cases tripled. No joke, manure is absolutely a hot commodity.

Geraghty has a lot more important insight into this problem at the link, but I'll close with this:

Few of these problems are expected to be short-lived. The numbers in the latest World Bank assessment are eye-popping:

Energy prices are expected to rise more than 50 percent in 2022 before easing in 2023 and 2024. Non-energy prices, including agriculture and metals, are projected to increase almost 20 percent in 2022 and will also moderate in the following years. Nevertheless, commodity prices are expected to remain well above the most recent five-year average.

In the event of a prolonged war, or additional sanctions on Russia, prices could be even higher and more volatile than currently projected. . . . Wheat prices are forecast to increase more than 40 percent, reaching an all-time high in nominal terms this year. That will put pressure on developing economies that rely on wheat imports, especially from Russia and Ukraine.

The human cost of this is staggering, with the number of people around the world at risk of famine jumping from 45 million to anywhere from 53 million to 65 million.

Right now, there’s probably some cold-hearted isolationist saying, “Yes, yes, this is all very sad, but how is this America’s problem?”

Well, hungry people do things that well-fed people do not. They protest and they riot. Hungry people move across borders as refugees. They are more easily recruited into terrorist or extremist groups. Hungry populaces are more likely to turn to demagogues promising an easy solution. Where there is hunger, there is conflict.

A lot of people around the world are going to die because one power-mad narcissist, Vladimir Putin, took it upon himself to invade a country that was no threat to him or the Russia over which he presides as dictator.

If that's not evil then the word has no meaning.