According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), emergency measures are essential to avoid such an outcome. This involves setting up alternative trade routes, limiting export restrictions, protecting humanitarian flows and creating reserves to absorb rising transport costs.
Now is the time to “start thinking seriously about how to increase the absorptive capacity of countries, how to build their resilience in the face of this bottleneck, in order to start minimizing the potential impacts,” he said. declared in a press release, Maximo Torero, chief economist of the FAO.
This involves studying “the interventions of governments, international financial organizations, the private sector, as well as United Nations agencies and other research centers, in order to help countries better cope with the current situation.”
From energy shock to food inflation
According to the FAO, the window of opportunity for preventive action is closing quickly. Decisions made now by farmers and governments about fertilizer use, imports, financing and crop choice will determine whether a serious global food price crisis erupts within six to 12 months.
The repercussions are already noticeable. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for a basket of globally traded food products, rose for the third consecutive month in April, driven by high energy costs and disruption linked to the Middle East conflict.
The shock spreads in successive stages: first energy, then fertilizers and seeds, before affecting agricultural yields. What follows is a rise in the prices of raw materials, then an acceleration in food inflation.
To mitigate these effects, the FAO recommends using alternative land and sea routes, particularly via the east of the Arabian Peninsula, the west of Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea. “However, these routes have limited capacity, making it essential to avoid export restrictions imposed by major producers,” said David Laborde, director of FAO’s Agri-Food Economics Division.
For alternative corridors bypassing Hormuz
More generally, the UN agency has compiled a series of political recommendations intended to address the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. In the immediate future, the FAO recommends the establishment of alternative logistics corridors to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, the absence of export restrictions – particularly for energy, fertilizers and inputs – as well as exemption from food aid.
It also recommends promoting intercropping and better targeting support via digital registers, at the expense of generalized subsidies in order to better target vulnerable rural households and small farmers, particularly in Africa.
In the longer term, FAO calls for diversifying ports, corridors, storage and logistics systems globally to reduce the risk of bottlenecks in the future. It also involves strengthening transport networks and developing, with fertilizer manufacturers, common tools for mapping soils and inputs.
