Last year, for the first time in its history, Tesco announced a three-lettuce ration on the purchasing of icebergs. A few months later, Brazil Nuts suddenly vanished from one of the UK’s favourite cereal bars, replaced with a package printed apology that read “Sorry no brazils!”.
Some 7 years before that, a revolution started in Tunisia that would spread across to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, sparking street revolts, toppling dictators, driving political coups and ultimately spawning civil wars that continue today.
The first was caused by almost unprecedented cold and wet weather in southern Spain, that devastated lettuce supplies. The second by the exact opposite: a severe drought in the Amazon rainforest that made nut pods drop from trees prematurely, leaving kernels too small for picky consumer markets.
And the third , at least in small part, was catalysed by a spike in food prices following the financial crash of 2008. What started as a crisis in the subprime mortgage market in the US somehow snowballed into something much bigger, laying the groundwork for bread riots half way around the globe. Bread riots that are now considered to have been one of the early warning signals of the Arab Spring.
These examples show that after thousands of years of humans largely eating homegrown food, food markets have become globally interconnected like never before. This has saved countless lives as poverty or disaster stricken regions can import staple crops from other countries.
It’s also been a boon for consumers, who can enjoy some of the wonders of world cuisine without having to trudge over to Colombia every time they want a banana. But, it leaves global food markets vulnerable to localised shocks. And as it turns out, there are are just 14 such spots on our planet where vulnerability is very tightly concentrated.
They’ve been called choke points in global food security, and they include roads, ports and shipping lanes through which huge chunks of the global food supply pass. The Panama Canal and Strait of Malacca link Western and Asian markets and so see ungodly loads of grain transported through them daily. Over a quarter of global soybean exports pass through the latter every year to feed livestock in China and Southeast Asia.
And more than half of the planet’s staple crop exports – wheat, maize, rice and soybean – must pass along a few inland routes, destined for a handful of key ports in the US, Brazil and the Black Sea.
The global food trade relies on just 14 critical “chokepoints”, which are increasingly imperilled by disruption.
The fear is that a sustained shock at any of the identified choke points could have wide-reaching impacts on global food markets. Thirteen of the fourteen choke points have already experienced repeated disruptions in the past decade.
The Panama canal has had exports imperilled by droughts and flooding, the Suez Canal has closed due to sandstorms and attempted terrorists attacks–including multiple bomb attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood, and grain imports through the Turkish Straits have been halted by the attempted coup.
Climate change could bring a slew of new problems, battering already weak infrastructure or creating hostile weather conditions that worsen food transit disruptions. Last year, 3000 trucks laden with soy were bogged down on an unpaved section of the BR-163 highway in Brazil, racking up $400,000 in daily losses for grain exporters.
Brazil’s roads are often poor and rendered impassible by rain, but with extreme flooding and heatwave events set to rise globally, the impact and frequency of such problems will be exacerbated.
And the real concern is if that of coincidental disruptions. As a report published by the Chatham House put it “If a hurricane comparable in ferocity to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were to shut down US exports from the Gulf of Mexico at the same time as extreme rainfall rendered Brazil’s roads impassable, up to 50 per cent of global soybean exports could be affected”.
Countries’ vulnerability to choke point disruptions isn’t evenly spread. Though almost 87% of China’s grain and fertiliser imports pass through at least one maritime choke point, less than 5% of these couldn’t be redirected through alternative route should the need arise.
But more than a third of grain imports headed toward the Middle East and North Africa–the most import-dependent region on Earth–flows through at least one choke point with no alternative routes. If these were to close or suffer long delays, the consequences would be vast.
And low income countries are not uniquely threaten by choke point disruptions. Japan and South Korea, amongst the richest nations on Earth, are hostage to the whims of the Panama Canal, Suez Canal, and the Straits of Bab al-Mandab and Malcacca for enormous portions of their wheat and corn imports.
And the worrisome fact is that choke points in the global food trade have been overlooked by almost every country. Worse, there has been a lack of international cooperation in managing the risk that floundering infrastructure and impending climate change poses to various choke points. This means that were a choke point to topple following a major disruption, any response is likely to be uncoordinated, with states bustling to secure their own supplies independently, deepening the crisis as they do so.
China alone stands out in this regard despite its role as a major importer. Acutely aware of its vulnerabilities, China has invested heavily in diversifying its supply routes, for example by constructing a railway across South America to limit its reliance on the Panama Canal.
Governments and international bodies can deploy a number of other tactics to mitigate the threat posed at choke points, from investing in better infrastructure to preparing for the worst my creating detailed between-nation emergency food sharing arrangements. The challenge is to make sure that these are up to dealing with the stress of time and the pressures of an uncertain future.
