It is no longer news that for close to two weeks now if not more, Russia and Ukraine have been engaging in a very fierce war. Worse still, the war isn’t looking like it will end soon. The adverse effects of crisis and wars between countries of the world can never be overemphasized, apart from loss of lives and properties, it grounds international trade and investments between the warring countries, the surrounding countries and even beyond. Aside that, it also badly affect Agricultural activities which Results in scarcity of certain raw food commodities and even processed ones. This very often results to serious hunger, starvation, food inflation, food insecurity and many more problems.
Russia as a country is one of the biggest exporters of wheat globally. Wheat is one of the most important grains that constitute greater % of edible food commodities both humans and as one of the constituents of animal feeds(bye products of wheat are often used in making animals feeds). The war that just broke out has over some couple of days made it very difficult for Russia to keep exporting wheat grains to countries of the world where it has always been in use from the production of different processed foods. The adverse effects of this Development is hitting harder on both the nutrition and the economy of countries across the globe.
The Director general of world Trade organization (WTO) Mrs Ngọzi okonjo-iweala, in a statement on the 1st of March 2022 decried the sudden increase in wheat and wheat products all around the world as a result of the war. She also emphasized on its ugly bite on the global economy at the moment and how the sudden rise in price is currently effecting average people and low income earners all around the world. Wheat grains are classified into two, the Hard-wheat and soft-wheat, different countries use either of these two wheat grains in the production of different products especially a product like bread.
In Nigeria, the scarcity of wheat grains are already biting hard, a lot of food processing industries who use wheat grains as her base material for the production of different packaged products have in the last couple of days sent notifications to their branches and partners, including the general public on the ugly situation, hence the possible price adjustments across a wide variety of products. The Food processing companies in the country use wheat grains in the production of Bread, spaghetti, noodles, cakes, cookies, biscuits, shortcakes, semovita, whole wheat meal, egg rolls, meat pie, pancakes, sharwama, etc. Even before the war broke out, there have been general food scarcity and hyper food inflation in the country especially on wheat based products as listed above due to exchange rates of Naira to the US dollars. Since 2016 till date, the prices of food products in Nigeria had kept increasing marginally, most especially wheat based products. With this war, it’s going to get worse, the prices of these wheat based products is sadly expected get even higher and it’s definitely going to affect a great deal, the nutrition and healthy feeding of greater percentage of the world’s population because wheat grains do not really have close substitute owing to it’s high gluten contents which isn’t like that in other grains.
Hopefully, something will be urgently done by the international community to quench the war so as to avert the looming global food insecurity which the scarcity of this wheat grains is breeding owing to the fact that Russia as a country is the biggest exporters of wheat grains all around the world.
FoodsDoctorPro 