By Krish Gupta
The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a cause for many pressing concerns and questions, one being its effects on agricultural production. Historically, war has shown both positive and negative impacts on farming practices and trade. Although the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has just started, researchers can predict what might happen, and their predictions reveal a few serious problems.
From the civil wars to two world wars, violent conflicts have had varying effects on agriculture. According to a North Carolina State University article from 2017, World War I greatly affected farming production in The United States and Europe. America saw an increase in food supply to meet the demand across the nation. In Europe, however, the agricultural economy collapsed because farmers became soldiers, and soldiers became casualties. It took many years after the war for Europeans to recover from the damages sustained by their agricultural system.
Conflicts in Afghanistan provide an example of how political conflict can be extremely detrimental to the agricultural production of a country. A 2019 Reliefweb article describes the economic prosperity that existed before the violence now prevalent in the country: a total revenue of $600 million in exports and a GDP of 71 percent in 1970. After the Soviet Union invasion in 1979 and many internal conflicts since then, Afghanistan’s GDP has dropped to 24 percent in 2013, and its wheat industry, which was once booming, is now completely obsolete.
Mali and Nigeria share similar catastrophes related to agriculture due to recent surges in conflict. A 2014 Brookings publication states that fighting has disturbed the supply and demand in these countries while causing labor shortages. These civil wars have also decreased the GDP of each country, and according to one estimate, agricultural production will decrease on average by about 12 percent for each year of conflict.
Reports predict that the recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine will have negative effects on agricultural production across the globe. A 2022 Politico article reported that Ukraine and Russia make up around 30 percent of the world’s wheat and barley production, and since the war has started, most of the trade from the Black Sea has stopped. This development is very significant in the global agriculture system. According to research from the International Food Policy Research Institute, the Black Sea has become one of the world’s most important trading ports in the past 30 years, so the halt in agricultural exports is a tremendous loss globally. Ukraine and Russia supply almost 50 percent of the wheat and barley found in the Middle East and Northern Africa, and Ukraine supplies about 50 percent of the world’s sunflower oil supply. These products are essential global commodities that are used in cuisine across the world as well as for feeding livestock. The shortages of these critical food products will lead to an increase in the prices of these products, which will lead to economic distress across the world and an increase in food insecurity. Countries like Egypt and Turkey which already experience high levels of food insecurity will be impacted the most.
Overall, conflicts seem to generally have a negative effect on the agricultural production of the countries involved and even the entire world—especially in today’s society where the food you eat can come from the opposite side of the globe. Media outlets already publicize the conflict between Russia and Ukraine for the devastating humanitarian impacts that have already occurred. But if world leaders cannot resolve the projected agricultural production crisis, the casualties of this war will stretch far beyond the impacts of direct violence.
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