When The "Food System" Breaks Down, Everything Will Break Down With It

-Friday also saw Indonesia cancel all exports of palm oil from 28 April until further notice. That takes out the world’s largest producer and exporter of this key vegetable oil at the same time as Ukraine’s sunflower oil is also largely off the world market. Naturally, this is going to have a vast knock-on effect across the global agri complex – and we were already seeing rationing in some Western supermarkets. Moreover, this underlines the recent trend of food exporters opting to stop doing so; on top of some countries using food exports as a ‘weapon’; and the US ‘weaponizing’ their currency.

Together, this changes the geo-economic equation for net food importers who had been relying on exporting widgets in the assumption the dollars earned could be exchanged for food: and when that system breaks down, everything breaks down with it; complex global supply chains stop working. Yes, we aren’t there yet, but the progression is similar to that of the French elections: 18%; 34%; 42%, etc.