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A global food shortage is imminent. The impending global food shortage could threaten the food security of less developed nations, especially poor people around the world.

Deaths

In a normal year about 9 million people are estimated to die of starvation and illnesses related to food shortages. Most deaths are in Africa and South Asia. This number is expected to climb two-fold in 2020.

Poor people

The global food situation will undermine food security of poor countries and poor people. Sri Lanka’s food security too may be weakened and low income and unemployed household’s access to minimum food requirements could be threatened.

Global food supply

Global food production and export surpluses are expected to decrease this year and next owing to reduced food production and disruption of food supply chains due to COVID19. Food production in many countries is affected due to shortages of labour, fertiliser and agro chemicals. For instance in India, farmers have been asked by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research to postpone cultivation owing to the pandemic. India’s migrant labour is not returning to agricultural areas. There are fertiliser shortages in many countries.

Food exports

Some countries have imposed restrictions on food exports. Cambodia and Vietnam have banned export of rice to ensure their own food security. Other countries may follow, if they perceive their food availability is barely adequate for their own consumption or that exports would increase prices in their country.

Transportation

Shortages in global food production could be aggravated by difficulties in shipping from exporting countries to food deficit regions. Difficulties in transportation would affect the availability of food in food deficit countries.

Furthermore, high costs in shipping would reduce importing countries capacity to access food. This is especially so as many developing countries are facing severe financial difficulties.

High prices

Shortages in food production, supply and availability would increase international food prices that would reduce import capacity of many food importing countries with lower export earnings, reduced remittances from abroad and decreased tourist earnings.

Food availability

Decreased food supplies, higher costs of food, increased transportation costs, financial difficulties and lower incomes will create severe hardships in developing countries. In this bleak global context, food deficit countries’ food availability would be threatened. Most of these countries are in Africa and South Asia.

Sri Lanka

The international food situation will have serious implications for the food security of Sri Lanka, though to a lesser extent.

Previous columns focused on the current food security concerns of the country that were mainly people’s accessibility to food due to their lack of incomes rather than a domestic or global supply shortage.

There were difficulties in transportation of agricultural produce from producing regions to markets and their distribution. However the bigger problem lay in the lack of incomes of workers and poor people to access the available food.

This problem will persist owing to the low and income-less population increasing  owing to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The shortage of food globally will also impact on Sri Lanka as we are a food deficit country that imports several basic foods. Although Sri Lanka’s food supply situation is relatively better than many developing countries, the adverse global food situation will impact on the country’s food availability, affordability and cost of accessing food from abroad.

Rice

The positive factor is the authorities have said the country has enough rice till the next Maha harvest in March – April 2021 and beyond, even though the 2020 Yala harvest is expected to be less owing to the weather that prevailed and shortage of fertiliser. A good Maha 2021 crop would consolidate the availability of the country’s staple food.

Rice stocks

However there is a contrarian view that rice stocks are smaller than announced by the authorities. Furthermore, current fertiliser shortages and the curfew disruptions will diminish the Yala 2020 crop. Rice availability next year may be insufficient due to these reasons.

Essential imports

Imports of basic food items such as wheat, sugar, dhal, onions, milk and other foods are vulnerable due to the global and country situation. Prices of these imports are likely to increase owing to reasons discussed earlier, the exchange rate depreciation and higher import duties.

Import duties

About a week ago, import duties were imposed under a import tax called the special commodity levy on several food items that included potatoes (Rs 50 per  kilo), sugar (Rs 50 per  kilo), split red dhal and yellow dhal (Rs 10 per kilo) and tinned fish (Rs 100 a kilo).

Since import prices of these basic foods would increase due to recent increases in their import duties, it poses serious threats to most people’s basic food consumption and expenditure, especially low income households. If domestic rice prices remain low, there is the possibility of a substitution or rice for wheat. However there are limits to such substitution.

Import substitution

There is a dominant view that high import prices would lead to self-sufficiency. Food import prices have been high for many years. Yet they have not achieved significant increases because the constraints to production are structural problems in agriculture rather than a lack of price incentives. On the contrary, high food import prices would erode food security of lower income families.

Summing up

The impending global food shortage could threaten food security of less developed nations and especially poor people around the world. About 18 million persons are estimated to die of hunger or hunger-related diseases this year owing to the disruption of food production and supply chains due  to COVID-19.

Food production is likely to decrease due to shortages of labour, fertiliser and agro chemicals. Difficulties in transportation would affect the availability of food in food deficit countries. Furthermore, the shortages in food production supply and availability would increase international food prices that would threaten food security of food deficit countries. Most of these countries are in Africa and South Asia.

Sri Lanka’s food availability would be affected adversely by these global developments. Increased import prices of wheat, sugar, dhal, onions and other basic foods would threaten food security of poor people in the country. Their food security has been eroded further by the recent imposition of higher import duties on basic food items.

The main issue in food security in Sri Lanka will continue to be the access to food by the unemployed, income-less and the poor. Providing them with food would be costly and, as has been evident recently, difficult to target to the real poor. Increased food prices will aggravate this predicament.

Conclusion

The supply, availability and cost of food is likely to aggravate the access to adequate food of less developed countries. International assistance is needed to avert this situation.

We cannot be complacent about food security of a large number of poor people in the country who have inadequate or are unemployed and income-less to access their minimum food requirements.