A worker collects Egyptian traditional 'baladi' flatbread at a bakery in el-Sharabia, Shubra district of Cairo. Photo / Nariman El-Mofty, AP, File
EDITORIAL
With a pandemic in full sway and climate change wreaking havoc, one might contend the world has quite enough to deal with.
However, a food crisis caused by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and extreme weather events has been conflated by the blockade of Ukrainian grain by Russian forces. A
chief economist at the UN World Food Programme says the war has more than doubled the number of people in "food crisis" to 345 million. Fifty million are "one step away from famine".
Mankind has developed from agriculturally self-sustaining to trading-reliant. This has afforded great advances and better lives for many but is vulnerable to upheaval. When supply lines fail, millions are within days of hunger; weeks from starvation. Egypt, as an example, grows less than half the food it eats. About 80 per cent of its grain comes from Ukraine and Russia.
