Thank you, Mr. Chair, and the committee for the opportunity to speak today.
I would like to make three points in relation to the global food security consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, drawing on insights from my own research as a professor at the University of Waterloo and in my role as a member of several international expert panels on food security.
The first point I want to make is that world food security has been profoundly affected by the decline of Ukrainian wheat on the world market. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine caused significant turmoil on global grain markets, which resulted in a major price spike that came on top of higher food prices due to disruptions to markets caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The price spikes were due to concern about global grain supplies, because Russia and Ukraine, at the time, together accounted for a quarter of the world’s wheat export market and a fifth of the world’s maize market. Of course, Russia is also the world's largest fertilizer exporter.
Food import bills rose sharply around the world, hitting developing countries that are dependent on food imports the hardest, especially countries in sub-Saharan African and in the Middle East, many of which relied on grain imports from Ukraine and Russia to meet their food security needs.
The result was a dramatic increase in global hunger. After a decade in which we saw hunger falling—