Agriculture committee  Right now I think, for the most vulnerable countries, it's urgent to implement the food import financing facility. The Government of Canada can support this through donations to SDRs at the IMF and support the IMF's implementation of this, because there are countries today that are running into huge stress that could end in social unrest if we don't act quickly this year.

Agriculture committee  No, what I was referring to was that they had an export restriction that they removed. That's why the price of oilseeds went down. As you know, Indonesia is one of the key exporters of palm oil. You had sunflower exports restricted because of the war, which were around 67%. Any country, like Indonesia, that puts an export restriction will immediately increase the price.

Agriculture committee  In terms of wheat, one of the countries that responded positively and had an expansion index was India. It has now put an export restriction on wheat exports, although they already export around 4.5 million more metric tonnes than they used to in the past, which helped reduce the gap in wheat.

Agriculture committee  Everything that happens with cereals affects feedstock. We have seen an increase in the cost of feedstock. Therefore, that's an increase in the cost of meat. It's important to understand that the grain still in Ukraine, which they said is between 20 million and 24 million metric tonnes.

Agriculture committee  No, what I was referring to was that in the current situation, for this year, we have a problem with food access because of increasing prices, but our major concern is what will happen in 2023. That has to be resolved very quickly because of the crop calendar and because of the importance of fertilization right now.

Agriculture committee  Canada can always help. It's an exporter of fertilizers too, so Canada can help in that sense. Also, it's very important to find mechanisms in which fertilizers can be moved out and distributed to the countries in need. The main concern we have right now is with rice, because it's the time they need to fertilize before harvest, and that's what could create the problem with rice, which is the only commodity that is doing okay right now.

Agriculture committee  You always have trade-offs in the decisions you make. Biofertilizers still have a long way to go, so I don't think that will be the immediate solution. It's something that will progress over time. Right now, if fertilizers cannot move faster.... There is a possibility that they can move because they are not part of the sanctions.

Agriculture committee  Yes, sir. There's a significant problem in what we call the food import bill, which is the cost of what you imported before the problem—before the war—and what you import today. There are several dimensions that have substantially increased the food import bill of all these vulnerable countries.

Agriculture committee  We have compared the level of export restrictions in the COVID-19 period, which were minimal, with 2007-08, which was around 70% of the traded calories. Today we are a little bit higher, at around 70.5% of traded calories. Our position, together with the Agricultural Market Information System's position, is that we should avoid any export restrictions at this point.

Agriculture committee  As I mentioned in my presentation, all the countries that are food import dependent on both the Russian Federation and Ukraine are affected. The ones most affected were the ones that were more than 50% import dependent on these two countries, especially North Africa, South Asia and other countries in Africa.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Excellencies and other honourable members of the committee. What I want to raise first is that, based on our global food crises report released on May 4, already in 2021 around 193 million people were in crisis, which means IPC 3 or above. In this dramatic context, we now face the war in Ukraine.