‘Quite terrible’: Close to 1 million people in famine, UN economist says

UN World Food Program Chief Economist Arif Husain joins Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita to discuss the worsening global food crises, food inflation, the number of people dealing with hunger and famine, and how climate change is disrupting crops and food distribution.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: The world is growing hungrier than ever, with conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine, impacting food production and shipments. Climate shock is ravaging crops. And the economic consequences of COVID-19 leaving many populations vulnerable, especially in some of the world's poorest countries. While food commodity prices have declined recently, they are expected to remain high into 2023.

Let's bring in the Chief Economist of the World Food Program, we've got Arif Husain joining us from Rome today. Arif it's certainly good to talk to you-- an important topic here. And I know you've been at this for a very long time, but it feels like there have been so many factors that have lined up all at the same time-- the Russia-Ukraine war, we've talked about energy prices, and then, of course, the climate shocks that have really been underlying all of it. What are you seeing from a top down view?

ARIF HUSAIN: Hi, Akiko. Thanks for having me. I think it's-- the story keeps on getting from bad to worse to worse kind of thing. Just to put that in perspective, I mean, pre-COVID we were talking about 135 million people in hunger crises or worse situations. That number went up to 276 million thanks to COVID. And today, with the combination of COVID and Ukraine, we are looking at 345 million people.

This is-- out of these 345 million people in about 80-plus countries, there are about 50 million people who are, like, a step away from famine. We call them in hunger emergencies. And there are about close to a million people who are, in fact, in famine-type situations. So this situation is quite terrible.

AKIKO FUJITA: You mentioned the 345 million number-- how much of that has been elevated as a result of what's been playing out in Russia, Ukraine? Obviously, when we talk about inflation overall, I mean, a lot of that has been driven by that-- energy a big one, but also we're talking about a big grain exporter, and they're a key exporter, especially to developing countries.

ARIF HUSAIN: Yeah. I mean, all I can say is that you can easily put about 50 million people to the consequences of war in Ukraine. We're looking at inflation-- and, obviously, we've followed that quite closely, both inflation as general inflation but also food inflation. I can tell you that upwards of 50 countries right now have food inflation, which is more than 15%.

Many countries are, like, I mean, even some of the upper income countries-- upper middle income countries are suffering from that. So food inflation is a very big deal. General inflation is a very big deal. Then the third thing, which we don't quite often talk about, is the depreciation of currencies around the world.

I mean, it's like literally dozens of countries around who have lost upwards of 25% off their currency value within less than a year. And what that means is with the stronger dollar, imports of essential commodities, whether it be food commodities, whether it be fuel, that becomes even more expensive. And that is a triggering factor for higher inflation in many of the developing countries as we speak.

AKIKO FUJITA: What has that meant from your perspective-- the UN World Food Program's ability to respond? As you said, this is an issue you were dealing with even before COVID, but you get a sudden uptick. Are you able to respond to every one of these situations?

ARIF HUSAIN: Yeah. I mean, what I would say is that looking next six months, we are looking at a deficit of about $7.8 billion. I like to say that when World Food Program is setting records, that's not a good thing for the world. And we have been doing that since at least 2021.

In 2021, we assisted about 116 million people. And that was a record in our 60-year history-- sorry, in 2020. In 2021, we assisted 128 million people. Again, that was a record. This year, we are planning to assist upwards of 140 million people, which will, again, be a record. So I think this growing food insecurity, this growing hunger, and how it is kind of impacting people, and economies, and governments, and creating instability are things which we need to be concerned about.

AKIKO FUJITA: There is a broader issue I know you've been tackling for some time, and that is climate change. I mean, we've already seen this summer record temperatures in Europe, in the UK. We've seen over in India how farmers are struggling there as well. If you take that 347 million, how much worse is it likely to get? And given that this problem isn't going away, how do you tackle it?

ARIF HUSAIN: It's tough. Let me just say, it's extremely tough. I think what we are trying to tell people is that in the connected world, we are all in this together. And the days of where actions and reactions were in different places are long gone.

So when something like this happens, and Ukraine is a classic example-- something happens in one part of the world and the repercussions are felt thousands of miles away. That is the story today. Climate, same story. I mean, what we are seeing now, if you look at year-on-year, there are more people who are displaced because of climatic shocks than conflict. This has been going on for the last five years.

So overall, yes, there are more people displaced because of the conflict. But when you break it down and see, OK, what is contributing more to these displacements, you see that climate is playing a very big role. And again, we see it on the ground that seasons are shifting. They are shrinking, which essentially means for smallholder farmers, they sometimes have to plant multiple times.

Where do the seeds come from? Or they have seeds, which mature, let's say, in five months, but now the season lasts only three months. So what are they supposed to do? And out of frustration out of seeing these shortages on the agricultural side but also on the water side, they start to move. Where do they go? They go to the slums in urban areas. That's where the conflict starts. So it's a vicious cycle of hunger, poverty, destabilization, and then migration out of destitution.

AKIKO FUJITA: Arif, really quickly, if we can bring it back to where we are right now in the US, obviously, I wonder how people should be thinking about what you just talked about. I mean, what are the trade offs that are waiting on the other end in terms of the food that comes through, the food that we have come to accept to be accessible? I mean, are there real trade-offs waiting on the other side?

ARIF HUSAIN: Well, one thing I think we need to really appreciate is that President Biden in the big Ukraine bill, the $40 billion, which passed, there was $5 billion for global food security. I think we also need to see that right now, environment is becoming-- governments are taking environment seriously. What we need-- we need similar actions from governments who are doing that already, and Thanks to their taxpayers, including the United States.

But many of us can do more. So on one side, we need to make sure that we do have enough resources to take care of these problems while they're occurring and not wait till they become your problem. Because this is the trend, right? When we don't solve the problems where they are, they kind of move and then they are problems at our borders, and then those need to be solved over there, and then we spend $1,000 more to deal with that.

And I think these are the things on one side we need to take care of right away. The second thing for me is we need to rethink our agricultural policies. We need to rethink our energy policies, both from an export diversification point of view, but also from basically making sure that we are not reliant on exports from very few countries, but also that we are not reliant in terms of stocks from very few countries.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah. And that's something that we have heard--

ARIF HUSAIN: And for fuel.

AKIKO FUJITA: That's something that we have heard the administration, at least here in the US, talk about-- certainly something a lot of policymakers around the world are discussing. Arif, appreciate your time today. Arif Husain, UN World Food Program's Chief Economist.