DAVOS, Switzerland –
“It is a major issue, and frankly I think the problem is even bigger ahead of us than it is behind us,” Gita Gopinath, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, told Reuters of rising food security concerns. “There’s a lot of conversations actually with the G7 happening here in the past 48 hours,” Collins said.For residents in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, 40% of their consumption is spent on food, Gopinath said. As well as a “huge hit to the cost of living”, price rises have given rise to hoarding by governments.
“We were facing an extraordinary food crisis before Ukraine, food costs, commodity prices, shipping costs were already doubling, tripling, quadrupling,” David Beasley, Executive Director for the United Nations World Food Programme, said. Many companies at Davos have been in touch about how they can act to address the food crisis, Beasley added.“Agriculture has to be part of the solution to climate change and has to tackle food security,” Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Syngenta Group, said during a panel discussion on Monday.