Unsplash
We are about three months deep into the war in Ukraine. And by now, all of you are starting to feel the heat of it. What do I mean by the heat? Well, look at your economy, your food supplies and reserves, you'll get the idea. Still I'll break it down for you. The world economy is at a very, very bad shape. Covid for two years had already disrupted the economy the economy enough. But that was something we could regain as soon as business went normal. But that halted economy combined with this war? Catastrophe. Okay why am I saying the war has killed the world economy? Let's talk about food for a while.
Food reserves is something that isn't much talked about. People always talk about slowed down businesses, financial problems, but not food. Because the leading countries who are supposed to talk about stuff, never really face the lack of food. But that never has changed in the past months. USA has only 5 months of food supplies, Britain supposedly has 6 months left in them. 1st world countries around the world have food supplies of around that period. Now moving on the second or third world countries. Inflations are at around 10% few percents give or take. Food prices increased around 20-30 percents. I'm talking about countries like our subcontinent, african countries, or lower European countries. In addition to all this, these countries don't have enough food reserves. Very few or about none in reserve. Big countries might think okay we can survive a few months if the world goes sideways. But what about these people? Reports say shopkeepers are running out of food to sell to the angry customers. Here's how it happened. A big, or say, huge chunk of the world's population rely on wheat as their staple food, wheat, corn, rice and that kinda stuff. And Russia and Ukraine combined shipped around 10-15% of the world's wheat and corn supplies.
Now you might say, what's a measly 15% gonna do. Well, this 15% is mostly shipped to underprivileged countries, the same countries which are running out of food. Countries like Tunisia, Ethiopia import more than half of their wheat from Ukraine. But Ukraine is too busy to keep themselves alive. Can't really blame them can we? Now China has the leverage. Surprised? Well you shouldn't, they have a good track record of outfoxing others. China have always stockpiled food more than other countries. Rightly so as the population is largest. But when the war kicked off, China bought up a lot of wheat in the open market. So yeah you can blame China for the high food prices and scarce supplies.
As per reports they now have reserves of 1.5 years. Whereas USA and Britain have only half a year. China are at the perfect state to leverage food to other countries. Here's what's gonna happen I believe. China will use these supplies to make deals with countries who need it. Namely the poorer ones. Ironically these countries are rich in natural resources, but no system to make use of them or mine them. So a deal where china provides you with the food you need. And in return, you let China to take out those natural resources, be pro China, and answer to their beck and call. Pretty old tactic but do you got a choice? You countries people are starving. Of course you would take that deal.