The Russia Ukraine Crisis Implications For Global And Regional Food Security And Potential Policy Responses

This paper analyzes the implications of the Russian-Ukraine crisis on global and regional food security. We start with a global vulnerability analysis to identify most vulnerable regions and countries. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is particularly vulnerable to trade shocks because of its high food import dependence. Thus, we provide descriptive evidence characterizing how food systems and policies impact vulnerability to the price shock in selected MENA countries: Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen. Within these countries, we show that the crisis will differentially impact poor and non-poor households as well as rural and urban households. Although the absolute level of food insecurity may still be higher in rural areas where larger numbers of poor households are located, urban poor are likely to suffer most because of the Russia-Ukraine crisis and associated hikes in food prices, especially in those countries where social protection and food subsidies are missing. On the policy side, we review lessons from previous food crises and identify actions needed to take (and to avoid) to protect most vulnerable countries and households in the short-term while also highlighting long-term policy options to diversify food, fertilizer and energy production and trade.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, sparking fears of a global food crisis, IFPRI responded rapidly to the need for information and policy advice to address the crisis. From the first moments of the conflict, a new IFPRI blog series provided critical information and insights into the impacts on food security, caused by rising food, fertilizer, and fuel prices and trade disruptions, for vulnerable countries and regions. This book is a compilation of those blog posts, which include analysis of trade flows, tracking of food prices and policy responses, and results of impact modeling. Together, they provide an overview of how the crisis has progressed, how the international community and individual countries responded with efforts to ensure food security, and what we are learning about the best ways to ensure food security in the aftermath of a major shock to global food systems.

This decade has been marked by multiple, often overlapping, crises. The COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, and the ongoing war in Ukraine have all threatened the fabric of our global food systems. But opportunities can be found amid crises, and the world’s food systems have demonstrated surprising resilience. With new evidence on what works, now is the time to rethink how we address food crises. Better prediction, preparation, and resilience building can make future crises less common and less devastating, and improved responses can contribute to greater food security, better nutrition, and sustainable livelihoods.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on tourist destinations in developing and developed countries. Though the entire globe was impacted, the short- and long-term implications for tourism as well as prospects for recovery vary across regions. This volume showcases research on the impact of COVID-19 on tourism from across the world. The book is divided into three parts, with the stage set by an introductory chapter that will provide a background and context. Part I contains chapters that explore the impact of COVID-19 on selected international tourist destinations. Part II showcases how various hotspots across the world adjusted to the new normal under pandemic conditions. Part III is a collection of chapters that address how various destinations are attempting to recover from the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic. The concluding chapter, written by the editors, seeks to synthesize the lessons offered in the book and provide policy and practical implementation for the tourism industry and other important tourism stakeholders.

Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have witnessed rapid and significant increase in recent months, driven largely by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and associated sanctions im-posed on Russia. Other factors, including governments’ responses and export bans, have also con-tributed to rising prices (Laborde and Mamun 2022). Palm oil and wheat prices increased by 56 and 100 percent in real terms, respectively, between June 2021 and April 2022, with most of the in-crease occurring since February 2022.

The participation of smallholder farmers in high-value and profitable value chains as well as contract farming remains low in Africa. This paper aims to identify observable and unobservable constraints that explain joint participation in profitable value chains and contract farming. We use a multivariate probit model to estimate potential complementarities between the cultivation of these various value chains (vegetables, fruits, spices, herbs, and cereals), and participation in contract farming. We identify several important observable factors that reinforce and hence limit smallholders’ participation in both low and high value chains as well as contract farming. For example, we find suggestive evidence that smallholders in Egypt face a trade-off between ensuring food security to their households and maximizing profit, and land plays a major factor in moderating this trade-off. We find that farmers with limited land resources are more likely to devote a larger share of their land to low-value crops such as cereals while this pattern weakens with increasing land size and slightly reverses for high-value crops such as spices and herbs. This suggests until some level of land resources, food security goals may dominate profit motives while this reverses after ensuring that food security goals are achieved. Younger and wealthier farmers are more likely to participate in the cultivation of high-value crops such as spices and herbs as well as contract farming. We also document strong complementarities between participation in high-value value chains and contract farming. Particularly, farmers who cultivate high-value crops are more likely to be engaged in contract farming. Intuitively, this implies that addressing smallholders’ binding constraints, including risk and access to land, can encourage participation in profitable value chains and contract farming. Our findings offer suggestive evidence that may serve in targeting smallholders to join profitable value chains in Egypt and other comparable contexts.

The global food crisis is a stark reminder of the fragility of the global food system. The Global Food Crisis: Governance Challenges and Opportunities captures the debate about how to go forward and examines the implications of the crisis for food security in the world’s poorest countries, both for the global environment and for the global rules and institutions that govern food and agriculture. In this volume, policy-makers and scholars assess the causes and consequences of the most recent food price volatility and examine the associated governance challenges and opportunities, including short-term emergency responses, the ecological dimensions of the crisis, and the longer-term goal of building sustainable global food systems. The recommendations include vastly increasing public investment in small-farm agriculture; reforming global food aid and food research institutions; establishing fairer international agricultural trade rules; promoting sustainable agricultural methods; placing agriculture higher on the post-Kyoto climate change agenda; revamping biofuel policies; and enhancing international agricultural policy-making. Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

This book presents the contributions from the 2nd International Conference Engineering Innovations and Sustainable Development, held in Samara, Russia on April 20–21, 2023. By presenting international research on various sustainability issues, it includes topics such as current trends in industrial and agricultural development, innovations in the construction and transport sectors, problems concerning the financing of innovative activities and governmental support for innovations, and engineering competences and skills in the era of new technologies. It also covers the economic, environmental, and informational aspects of sustainable development in the context of innovations. Finally, the book addresses theoretical and practical aspects by studying the phenomenon of sustainability and engineering development in terms of comparing international experiences. It provides significant value for scientists, teachers, and students of higher educational institutions, and specialists, who are researching sustainable development issues in the era of engineering innovations.