Empty Tables - The Arab World's Impeding Food Crisis

Opinion analysis by Ricardo Bitar, Featured Writer

April 23rd, 2022

Lebanon and the Arab World are entering a month of festivities, with the month of Ramadan already here and Easter. With food at the center of our culture, the dining tables of the whole Arab population are usually filled with an abundance of food. However, this year, the situation is very different. According to the World Food Programme, the cost of the basic food basket has increased a whooping 351% in Lebanon, 97% in Syria, and 81% in Yemen. The prices of some staples have also witnessed such increases, with wheat flour and cooking oil prices increasing significantly.

Historically, such changes in food prices have rarely been received calmly by the people. In 1977, Egypt witnessed “bread riots”: demonstrations following subsidies cut that led to at least 70 deaths. During the Arab Spring in 2011, bread was an important aspect of demonstrations in this country to topple Hosni Mubarak’s military government, with a popular slogan being “bread, freedom, and social justice”. This was also the case more recently in Sudan, where the increase in bread prices was a major factor in the protests that pushed out President Omar Al-Bashir in 2019.

The increase in bread prices in Sudan was caused by the government’s fiscal policies. However today, the phenomenon we are witnessing is mostly the result of something very different: Russia’s War on the Ukraine. These two countries contribute to 12% of the food calories produced globally, with Russia being the world’s leading wheat supplier and Ukraine a top supplier of sunflower oil and a major wheat producer.

Following the start of the war, Russia banned grain exportation, and Ukraine has stopped all port activities.  These decisions, in addition to the sanctions imposed on Russia, are expected to have a detrimental effect on food security worldwide. Arab countries, which are heavily reliant on imports, are especially vulnerable to the situation.

What makes them even more sensitive to this situation is the extreme effect of climate change on the region. Whereas the global temperature increase was about 0.7 degrees Celsius, temperatures around the MENA region have risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius, more than twice the global average. This is concerning, seeing as the region is already hot. According to the UN, these rising temperatures will have an effect, and are already affecting the food production systems and water supplies of the Arab world.

“Climate change is increasing weather and yield variability and if severe weather events such as droughts, heatwaves, or floods will hit this season there will be compound effects, destabilizing the food system further,” wrote Jonas Jägermeyr, climate scientist and crop modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies, in an email to the Scientific American. “China already indicated that their wheat outlooks are very poor and other world regions don’t look great either.”

Such a drop in productivity of other countries means the future doesn’t look so bright for the Arab world. As the countries we rely on for food imports produce less and less food, MENA countries will have to rely more heavily on themselves. And as climate change intensifies, food production here becomes exponentially more challenging. Being a region with 12 of the world’s 17 most “water stressed countries”, agriculture is becoming impossible.

Logically, one would expect MENA countries to be the first to tackle the climate crisis, seeing the bleak future they have ahead. However, this is not the case.

“We cannot ignore or say we are going to abandon certain production. It’s just not the right time, whatever reason you have,” said Suhail al-Mazrouei, UAE Minister of Energy, during an energy forum in Dubai. This view was echoed many times throughout the region, with Arab leaders not willing to give up fossil fuels for cleaner means of energy, thus directly contributing to the climate crisis afflicting their own countries.

Without action from world leaders, and especially from our leaders, the Arab world will only become more vulnerable to situations like the one we are passing in now. And then, our Ramadan and Easter tables will only become smaller and smaller.