News of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine grips our attention. Indiscriminate attacks on civilians, nuclear threats, the danger of escalating warfare, and the wider impact of sanctions on Russia—particularly on oil and gas markets—are both compelling and disturbing. In light of this barrage of news, we might overlook the secondary impact of the conflict on global food supplies. This impact threatens to spiral in unforeseen ways, potentially leading to suffering and additional instability in other parts of the world. Although this situation is unique, famine and food insecurity have been recurring problems through world history.
To understand the threat of famine through the development of our modern world, the work of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) is a useful starting point. Malthus was a pioneering scholar of political economy and demographics. His 1798 book, An Essay on the Principle of Population, drew a foundational connection between food supplies and population. He argued that as a nation increases its production of food, its population grows and eventually outstrips its food supply. This causes famine and related strife, and most likely leads to population crashes due to either starvation or deaths caused by the resulting turmoil. Malthus based his argument on his study of population trends in Europe and the British Isles prior to the 1790s. Since his time, some have found his theory compelling, but more have dismissed it. Indeed, he made his case just as Great Britain and western Europe shifted away from cycles of population booms and starvation. Factors that he had not accounted for came into play. The western nations exploited other parts of the world through colonization, immigration, and the extraction of resources. Migration provided an escape valve for the growing surplus populations of the United Kingdom and Europe despite tremendous costs for the indigenous peoples of the colonized regions. At the same time, increasingly globalized trade, along with the industrial revolution, led to growing market economies that enabled western nations to import food and other raw materials in exchange for manufactured goods.
While Europeans (and their descendants in such places as the Americas and Australia) were largely able to escape the Malthusian trap, cycles of population explosion and famine continued well into the twentieth century, in other parts of the world. Finally, this cycle appeared to break after the Second World War as colonial empires gave way to newly independent nations and agricultural innovations became widespread. Taken together, these innovations brought on the Green Revolution. The technologies of the Green Revolution include chemically-based pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, as well as mechanized farm equipment, massive irrigation systems, and hybrid crops that are optimized for various environments. These led to rapid expansions in agricultural output that kept pace with growing populations. At the height of this global revolution, Danish economist Ester Boserup (1910-1999) directly challenged the Malthusian theory. In her 1965 book, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, she laid out her theory of agricultural intensification. She argued that as populations grew, they developed more productive approaches to farming. This aligned with the technological advances of the period. But others rejected this optimism. In 1972, The Limits of Growth, published by the Club of Rome, used computer models to argue that as global population continued to expand, eventually the planet’s resources would be totally exhausted, including its capacity to grow food, essentially confirming Malthus’s theory. Since then, new advances have boosted agricultural output. These include the use of genetically modified organisms and high-tech precision monitoring of growing environments, along with the globalized supply chains and marketplaces for agricultural commodities. But these technical advances—along with previous ones—come with other costs. Innovations, such as mechanical farm equipment, irrigation systems, and chemical fertilizers, depend on fossil fuels and have significant adverse environmental impacts on soil, water, and the climate.
The ability to produce crops is only one factor in the global food supply equation. Political and economic issues also play significant roles in determining whether sufficient food reaches those who need it. For example, the two largest famines of the twentieth century occurred in the Soviet Union (1930-1933) and Maoist China (1958-1962) when communist regimes enforced rapid transitions to collective agriculture. These two famines caused approximately 35 million deaths—about half of the roughly 70 million people that perished in twentieth century famines. Often, several factors combine to cause famine. For instance, warfare, political strife, and economic turmoil can all join with environmental problems, such as drought, to produce mass starvation.
Despite technological advances, hunger and malnutrition continue to be global problems. According to UN estimates, between 720 and 811 million people went hungry in 2020 and almost 2.4 billion people did not have access to adequate food. Two recent trends have increased potential vulnerabilities. The last several decades have seen huge migrations from rural areas to cities. This makes formally rural people dependent on long supply-chains for their nutrition. And, in many parts of the world, farmers have transitioned from subsistence agriculture to growing cash-crops for the global marketplace.
This brings us to the present crisis. Russia and Ukraine are both major grain exporters. Russia is the top wheat exporting nation (followed by the United States), and until now, Ukraine was the number four wheat exporter. Ukrainian farmers are entering the season when they need to cultivate their winter wheat crop to maximize their harvest. Before many weeks pass, they will also need to prepare their fields for planting their spring wheat. Ukraine is not in any position to export any agricultural products, but out of concern about international supplies, other nations are also barring export of food products. While the war is not directly impacting Russian farmers like their Ukrainian neighbors, they are likely to be effected by the international sanctions on the Russian economy and financial system. Increasing energy costs will also raise the price of transporting food products.
At this point, analysts hope that the US will be able to draw on long-standing wheat surpluses, and other nations, especially India and Australia, will be able to increase their grain production and exports. But even if the global impacts on food supplies and prices turn out to be minimal, the poorest people are likely to suffer greatly. Even minor disruptions can be devastating for the most vulnerable. Hopefully policy makers, and farmers, in the US and other leading nations will take the needed actions to prevent this crisis from escalating into a catastrophe. This crisis should also serve as a wake-up call for us to take the requisite steps to build resilient and sustainable food production and distribution systems in the face of the longer-term threat of climate change.
The author, Timothy C. Leech, received his PhD in US History from Ohio State University, after preliminary Graduate studies at Harvard. He is currently based in Ontario, Canada. He blogs under the handle Historian4Justice and tweets @History_Justice.