Pandemic, war and climate change affect food supply, says economist

In an interview with CNN Radio economist, senior researcher at the Policy Center for the New South and former director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Otaviano Canuto, said he was concerned about the global phenomenon of energy and food price shocks.

“The impacts end up being differentiated by regions, but everyone is feeling it. Since the pandemic, we have had food prices increase, and we have had several problems with crops due to weather phenomena,” she said.

At the same time, the expert says that the United States already has a forecast that wheat production will fall, which will be exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which is, alongside Russia, an important supplier of wheat and sunflower oil.

“The pandemic, war and the climate brought several problems and, to make matters worse, producing countries decided to adopt protectionist measures to ban exports”, he evaluated.

According to Canuto, there are several shocks affecting the food supply and several factors affecting the increase in energy.

“It’s not like in the 70s the price of oil was, but today we have oil, gas and even coal on the rise, there is no room for maneuver to control, the price goes up and everything else goes up. So you have food and energy price shocks impacting everybody, to varying degrees.”

He added: “Europe feels it in energy, but here in the US the level of inflation in retail is really high, imagine for those who are poor and particularly in poor economies, for whom food and fuel are an important part of the consumption basket”.