With Ukraine’s sunflower oil shipments blocked, some nations are blocking food exports and starving others—especially India

(Originally published May 2 in “What in the World“) Rising food prices have prompted an increasing number of nations to make matters worse by blocking exports of their own agriculture in an attempt to secure supplies.

• Ukraine, facing a blockade and the seizure of its ports as well as the destruction of its farmland, has banned exports of what little wheat, sunflower oil, oats and cattle can still be shipped;
• Russia, confronted by sanctions, has banned exports of fertilizer, sugar and grain;
• Indonesia, faced with rising prices for edible oils, has banned exports of palm oil;
• Turkey, a major importer of Ukrainian wheat, has banned exports of butter, beef, live goats and lamb, maize and vegetable oils;
• Similar bans have spread down Ukraine’s European supply-chain to Hungary, Moldova, and Serbia as well as to countries that rely on Ukrainian wheat, including Algeria, Egypt and Lebanon.

The impact of this “food protectionism” ranges from limits on vegetable oil sales in the United Kingdom to a growing food crisis in East Africa. Prices for soybean oil in South America have surged to a record high.

Perhaps the biggest casualty of higher cooking oil prices is India, the world’s second-largest cooking oil consumer but the world’s largest cooking importer. Indonesia alone accounts for almost a fifth of that.