And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. The Book of Ezekial 6.8

In the past few years, we have had pestilence (Covid-19), we have had war (Ukraine), we have had the beast (President Putin, aka Vlad the Terrible); as for the remaining member of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse quartet – famine - we may not have to wait too long for it to make its appearance.

Even before the start of the Ukrainian War famine was stalking the globe. In January Southern Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopa and Nigeria, all war zones, were already at the UN’s maximum Phase 5 food insecurity ranking. Another 20 countries, including Afghanistan and Lebanon, were considered hotspots according to a report in January by the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Russia’s naval blockade of Ukraine’s major Black Sea port, Odessa, has only exacerbated the African food crisis. Ukraine supplies 12% of global corn exports, 9% of wheat and 17% of Barley; enough, at a time when Covid had already disrupted supply lines, to cause a global shortage. Although grain prices fell 30% from their peak in May, they are still 30% higher than 12 months ago.

If the rise in global wheat prices is troubling, the real crisis is in vegetable oils. Ukraine accounts for 46% of the world’s sunflower oil exports. The spot prices of sunflower oil have almost tripled since 2019.

With Ukraine also supplying 56% of the world’s sunflower meal and 20% of its rapeseed, both important livestock feeds, global animal husbandry is also in crisis. Added to this, fertilizer prices, closely linking to natural gas, are raising the spectre of global famine. According to the London based CRU (Commodities Research Unit) Fertiliser Index prices have risen from a low of 100 in 2020 to a peak of 377 in 2022. Although prices have fallen from their peaks in May, the crisis is far from over. Russian and Belarusian production of fertilizer feeds, Potassium, Nitrogen and Phosphorus account for 37%, 16% and 14% respectively of global exports.

If the situation in European agriculture is dire, the crisis for Africa is existential. The Middle East and Africa are now facing critical supply problems. Hunger is even being reported in such middle-income nations such as Turkey. The African Union has warned the EU that they face ‘a catastrophic scenario’.

The Horn of Africa beaten down by four years of drought and plagues of locusts is in particular distress. On current forecasts the number of people suffering starvation in Somalia, Ethiopa and Kenya alone is likely to increase by 25% to 20m by the end of this summer. In the short term, even rain is unlikely to save the situation. Add another 20m hungry people to this figure if Sahel (the region that runs coast to coast below the Sahara desert) is included. The African countries affected include Eritrea, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal.

On the 2 June Chad declared a food emergency and appealed for help. West African nations that normally buy up to half of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia can no longer afford to do so. Already as much as 20 percent of Africa’s 280m people are going hungry. Senegal President Macky Sall, Chairman of the African, has already visited Putin in Moscow as well as European leaders at a summit in Brussels to air concerns that ‘the worst is perhaps ahead of us.’

Although famine is usually associated with Africa, the harbinger of bad news on this front came from Asia. In April 2021, just as global food prices were starting to explode, Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaska, having swallowed the ‘Green Dream’ ideology, doubled down on his election promise to make his island nation the first in the world to be completely organic, by banning imported fertilisers and pesticides.

Predictably rice production collapsed. In April this year, when his country began to starve and the cities of Columbo and Kandy were rocked by food riots, Rajapaska had to do an about-face at a time when fertiliser prices were rocketing.

Thus, a paddy farmer such as Dilrukshi, who normally plants his 1.6 hectares is now only planting 0.2 hectares – enough to feed his family; ‘We can’t afford the expense of cultivating.’ Mass starvation beckons. Sri Lanka’s new prime minister, Ranil Wickreesinghe, has warned that shortages of food are the least of his country’s problems; ‘Our economy has completely collapsed.’

Sri Lanka, with a population of just 22m, represents the just tip of Asia’s impending famine crisis. According to a UN report in 2021 more than 400m Asians were already undernourished. Given the plethora of fertiliser and food price rises that have emerged in the aftermath of the Ukraine War, one can expect that figure to double in 2022.

Historically war has nearly always brought famine. In its wake, famine brings political instability and in extremis, revolution. ‘Let them eat cake’ Marie Antoinette supposedly told Louis XVI’s ministers in response to starvation in Paris before she and her husband were guillotined in the French revolution.

Today’s food price inflation and starvation is almost certain to bring about political change and in some cases revolution. It is no coincidence that the last major spike in agricultural commodity prices, much less severe than today, was in 2007-2010 and took place at the same time as the Arab Spring. Sri Lanka’s political and economic collapse is the near-term future of many of the world’s poorest economies. Advanced economies also face political turmoil caused by inflation. This is already evident in Britain, France, Germany and the United States.

China too will be worried. It has often been wrongly diagnosed that the urban insurrection that became known as Tiananmen Square Massacre, was caused by a wish for democracy. This was a lazy narrative put out by the BBC and CNN at the time; it was not democracy but food price inflation that followed Deng Xiaoping’s market driven deregulation of agriculture that threatened the communist party’s rule at Tiananmen Square. In the current global crisis China too will not be immune from inflation. Producer Prices are already up 8% year on year and consumer prices are also trending higher.

Perhaps an indicator of China’s alarm is that the Le Yucheng, deputy foreign minister, and the man most closely associated with the Xi Jinping’s ‘no ceiling on China-Russia relations strategy’ was peremptorily sacked on 14 June. The removal of Le Yucheng is perhaps the clearest sign that Xi may be forced to backtrack on his support for Putin. Will China now put pressure on Putin to stop the war in Ukraine?

There are also straws in the wind to suggest that Xi, for the first time in years, may be looking for an accommodation with the United States. Recently, Jake Sullivan, US national security advisor, met with senior Chinese Yang Jiechi in Luxembourg where they negotiated for over four hours arrangements for a summit between Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden. If this proposed meeting heralds a calming of international tensions over Ukraine and Taiwan, it would be a welcome reaction to the devastations currently being wrought by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But it will be too late to save the world from ‘The Great Famine’.