NEW YORK - A healthy diet is slipping beyond reach for a growing number of people around the world as conflict drives up the cost of fuel, fertilizer and transport, the United Nations' food agency warned on Wednesday, ahead of a major report on global food security.
Maximo Torero, the chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said that between 70 and 75 percent of the cost of a healthy diet is generated after food leaves the farm, in storage, transport, processing and wholesale markets. A nutritious diet, he said, now costs more than the international extreme-poverty line, placing it out of reach for billions of people.
Torero's warning, delivered at a UN briefing ahead of the July 21 launch in Rome of the FAO's annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, connects the phenomenon directly to the world's conflict zones. Fighting around the Strait of Hormuz, he said, has choked off the fuel and fertilizer that farming depends on.
"The Strait of Hormuz removes between a quarter and a third of the key inputs for the whole food system — natural gas, the sulfur and acids for fertilizer, energy," Torero said. "That's a supply shock. The price of those inputs goes up."
He said the shock takes three to six months to reach supermarket shelves, implying that much of its impact yet to be seen. Global food prices have already climbed to their highest level in more than three years, according to Bloomberg, which correlates price inflation to war-driven supply disruptions. Fertilizer has been hit hardest: major Gulf producers in Qatar and Saudi Arabia have declared force majeure and halted urea production, while cargo remains in-limbo, awaiting passage through the strait, the International Food Policy Research Institute reported.
Hitting Iraq’s table
The strain is already visible in Iraq, one of the world's most import-dependent food markets. Basic food prices across the country have risen 15 to 25 percent, according to a Chatham House analysis, while the price of vegetables normally imported from Iran has doubled in the Kurdistan Region. Iraq moves more than 90 percent of its trade by sea, leaving it acute to disruption in the Gulf.
A weakening currency compounds the pressure. The Iraqi dinar has decreased on the black market from its official rate of 1,300 to about 1,550 to the dollar, eroding household purchasing power as import costs continue to climb.
A global paradox
When asked by Rudaw which part of the world faces the steepest cost, Torero pointed to a region far from the Gulf.
"The region doing the worst on the cost of a healthy diet is Latin America, especially the Caribbean," Torero said. "It has the highest cost of a healthy diet in the world. And the contradiction is: this is a continent that exports a lot of food."
FAO argues that part of the answer lies closer to home. Building diets around locally produced foods reduces its cost by roughly a third worldwide, the agency says, and it has urged governments to redirect subsidies away from staple cereals toward more nutritious foods.
A government duty
At the UN noon briefing, Secretary-General's spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told Rudaw that governments play an instrumental role in food security, going so far as to frame it as an obligation.
"Governments have a duty to ensure that their people live freely, and that they live healthily," Dujarric said.
Dujarric said the turmoil in the Gulf "impacts everything," and pressed for a return to diplomacy.
The FAO will publish the full report on July 21 in Rome. Torero said the supply shock offered no quick fix, noting that building new fertilizer and processing capacity is a process that can take years to achieve.
