Russian Invasion In Ukraine: Challenges And Implications For Food Security

In a global framework disrupted by instability and conflict, both from a social and economic perspective, the primary human needs of the populations are the ones that the policy makers and researchers should keep at the top of their agenda. Therefore, the problem of food security worldwide imposes itself as a very stringent aspect to take into account when evaluating the implications of the current global turbulences. The primary objective of the present article is to review, based on the information available at the regional and global level, the impact of the Russian invasion in Ukraine on food security, and to provide some helpful insights to world leaders whose responsibility is to elaborate adequate policies that minimize the negative consequences of this military conflict, especially considering food shortages. After an in-depth analysis, we identified the fact that the war negatively impacted the agricultural sector, adding on the pressures generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation, and climate change. Although at the regional level, as in the case of the EU, there have not yet been any situations of food insecurity, globally, in the case of countries with a high degree of dependence on food aid and food commodity imports, food insecurity started to manifest since May 2022 putting under risk a considerable part of the population. The results also revealed that, at the global level, the four dimensions of food security – availability, access, utilization and stability – have been affected both in the short and in the long term. Both globally and at the EU level, there have been changes regarding cereal prices, quantity produced, export, and import levels. The EU – Ukraine solidarity corridors were among the methods implemented to reduce the impact of the war on the agricultural sector, and mainly to avoid a possible world crisis and the deepening of food insecurity challenge.