It is an established socio-economic fact, recently repeated by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), that the poor suffer most when food prices rise as a higher proportion of their income(s) is spent on food. In the worst case they will not have the money to buy food at all as in the Famines of the past. The inexorable rise in food prices since the consequences of human-made climate change is going to be accelerated but a cyclical weather pattern─El Nino─itself exacerbated into a Super El Nino by one of those consequences, rising ocean temperatures. The World Food Programme has warned that its drought-flood effect will push 50 million people into acute hunger and devastate specific crops in Africa, Latin America and in South and East Asia most of all.
A crisis is something not to be wasted. ZAMS Asset Management see El Nino as likely to produce an “unusually alpha-rich environment”. Moreton Capital Partners and Man Group also see opportunities to make money. As for the IMF. their concern is that low-income countries, those likely to be most affected, be cautious in their use of food subsidies. It may be that food vouchers are a better system but their worry, a giveaway of their interests, is that “temporary crisis measures can easily become permanent especially when they are perceived as entitlement.” Th dread of the very notion of entitlement is overwhelming. Its report also references the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how it pushed 71 million people into poverty. The impact is still being felt. Countries as far apart as Vietnam and Egypt, the world’s biggest wheat buyer, are not receiving grain from the Black Sea while prices have jumped to a three-rear high. “Russia’s exports are throttled by Ukrainian drones while Ukraine with its ports blocked, is struggling to get id grain out by land or river.” In addition as a result of climate change induced drought in the USA and Europe’s crop limited by this year’s heat waves. The more recent US-Israeli attack on Iran and subsequent closure of sea transport routes increased the price of fertilisers by 50% at the time of the planting season.
AS an unintended consequence of the tariffs aimed at Canada, the USA Administration faces a potential shortage of mostly potash-based fertilisers of which Canada is the dominant world producer. As a result the Administration is scrambling to make a deal with a smaller-scale producer, the Russian-influenced, authoritarian state of Belarus.
While research into drought-resistant food plants is ongoing, and declared that bio-tech accurate molecular breeding will be needed to “feed the world” in circumstances of climate change, farmers themselves using trial-and-error processes are working to adapt to a hotter and drier world. Japanese rice farmers faced with “cruelly hot days” and damaged crops, immature seeds have developed more adaptable varieties. One such variety, Hinatamaru, is thriving, making plump grains.