The situations caused by extreme weather are affecting crops across the globe and forcing the world towards severe food inflation, said a Bloomberg report. This comes at a time when the prices of food products are already hovering near the highest in a decade and hunger is also on the rise due to weather situations like – worst frost, flood, drought, extreme rainfall.
According to the report, various extreme weather situations caused disruptions in food production across the world. The report cited examples of many countries with a warning that this situation will continue to have a significant impact on the world.
In South America , Brazil’s coffee trees have to bear the brunt of the worst frost it has seen in two decades. The result: the prices of coffee witnessed a surge of 17 percent this week. Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee.
The flood situation in China’s key pork-producing region has raised the threats of animal disease and other health problems. It said that the scorching heat and drought damaged the crops on both sides of the US-Canada border. After torrential rains hit Europe, the risk of fungal attacks on grains went up manifolds.
For the past many years, scientists around the world have been warning that climate change and extreme weather situations will make it increasingly harder to produce enough food for the world. They have warned that the poorest nations will feel the hardest blow and social and political unrest can be seen in such countries, the report claimed.
Agnes Kalibata, a United Nations special envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit and Rwanda’s former agriculture minister, said that the events unfolding in one part of the world will have a global impact.
The Food Price Index from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has seen an upward trend for 12 consecutive months till May before easing in June to 124.6 points, which is still up 34 percent from a year earlier. The index measures the international prices of a basket of food commodities.
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Source: News18