The United States and the European Union are looking at how to improve food supply chains with export restrictions from India and other nations accentuating global problems, the EU’s trade chief told CNBC.
G-7 foreign ministers warned over the weekend that the war in Ukraine is increasing the risk of a global hunger crisis. This is because Ukraine has been unable to export grains, fertilizers and vegetable oil, while the conflict is also destroying crop fields and preventing a normal planting season.
This has increased the reliance on nations from other parts of the world for these products. But some of these countries, concerned about supplies for their own citizens, have imposed restrictions on exports, according to CNBC.
India announced on Saturday a ban on wheat sales to manage the overall food security of the country.
“That’s something which is very much of concern,” Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU’s trade chief, told CNBC Sunday about these new export measures.
“We agreed with the United States to cooperate and coordinate our approaches in this area, because … as a response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and a corresponding increase in food prices and concerns about food security, countries are starting to take export restrictive measures. And we think that this is a tendency which can only actually aggravate the problem,” Dombrovskis said.
He added that these measures, such as Indonesia’s ban on palm oil exports, “make matters worse.”
Limits on exports are likely to drive up commodity prices, and therefore food costs too. For the EU, this is a matter of food affordability, Dombrovskis explained.