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00:00[CC may contain inaccuracies] We are seeing more than 30 countries or so having restricted some of their food exports since the war in Ukraine began. How will this impact food prices. Would even. Nice to see you. And look at what is happening right now is that Congress are reacting to the increase in prices as you said today. Prices went to high school kids or in March according to the food price index of FPL and therefore it was a very slight reduction. Now if we look at the level of export restrictions we have had around 60 measures. If we compare this with Covid-19 we only have around 7 percent of the countries that move around the world with some export restrictions at the beginning. And then it nearly went to zero. If we look at it food prices of toys this number went up to 17 percent of the shelves of all countries in the world. And then it moved lower after the crisis endorsed that toy. And if we look at today and we are warning Ukraine we are around 17 to 18 percent. Most countries export in the industry. What this means is that supply is restricted and therefore discomfort pressure in prices. And that's what we need to avoid. How do you get out of this. I mean you said that once supplies returned to more normalized levels of protection this measure is go away. But this time around in 2022 with the war in Ukraine ongoing. How do we get out of this. Not look at 2010 is not a major problem right now. Despite of the worrying in grain. Why is not the problem. Because some countries have reacted and produce and export more. So they got what we have today on wheat exports for example it's only 14 million metric tons because of the increase in exports by India and in Greece. And that's where the European Union ended up in me is a little bit bigger is around Covid million metric tons because of the increase in exports of Argentina. Is the United States and South Africa. Because not all of the what we export in the year happened after the war. There were basically restricted that gap of around 2 million metric dancing with and other similar longer economies. So that has been Covid partially. So what we have to go to to to work with countries not only avoid doing this type of restrictions is to share the information availability of fish stocks. And that will have a good deal because we need to all these and especially when you to about it for the next year because a major concern for us is the next year exports. Why. Because if the war continues a under fertiliser restrictions continuous you will not only be the exports from Grain and Russia Federation which is around 30 percent obviously doesn't the world but it would also be out of the in the use of the world of the key exporting countries because of their lack of access to fertilizers that we are facing to the. Maximo what about the side of things where individual countries are trying to ensure as part of this their food security. What's the role of China here. Because we've seen Beijing started to buy stocks of corn from Brazil which is a very rare move. Is this going to exacerbate the broader problems. No. And we need to understand is the Chinese a big importer conquering the world. And basically they consume all what they produce. And in insidious the importance of central amount of cereals they hold importing the stocks because of the level of supply. But this stocks in China have to centralize. So I don't see too much. The problem in China. The problem in other countries. I think what is important today indifference to door 7 DOI is that in 2022 we have enough food without food. Our inability our major challenges for food access. And that's because prices are too high. But in 2022 we could spend a day three sorry. We could face a problem of food availability and food access. And what we need to do to resolve it is to make fertilizers to flow into the markets. And that means that the war needs to stop and Russia needs to allow exports of fertilizers to the world. But if that doesn't happen we need to find ways to increase efficiencies in the use of fertilizers. One way to increase efficiencies is to reduce waste in fertilizer use and also to find ways in which we can delay the process of application of fertilizers until this problem is resolved. Meaning reducing it for two or three months so that we can resolve the war in the ground. We're also seeing at the same time it's not just that the breadbasket of Europe but the breadbasket across the US a lot of these planting crop plantings states and very behind due to weather problems in some states compared to about 10 percent of crops where they usually be fully planted at this point in time. So if you look at geopolitics as may be an idiosyncratic or a short medium term challenge how do you deal with the challenge of climate change going forward and some other climate related issues. That's an extremely important question because and if there is any climate in any of that gets in countries like Brazil the US or Argentina Panama you to wait we will facing that substantial problem in the developing city. So yes I think the major problem right now as I mentioned before is that the big big exporting countries are trying to procure different lesser. They need it. The US is really making a significant effort in trying to find solutions as well as other countries. And that's where we need to find solutions. Give you an example Mexico which was a net importer of fertilizers is now using their capacity because they are a predominant exporting country and they are using their nitrogen and to be able to produce nitrogen which was where Russian Federation is their first exporter in the world. So we are extremely vulnerable. I would say that right now we have not enough good graces because we have no amount of eating. We have good access. But clearly we're running a significant risk in 2023 of having the food crisis. If the problem is not resolved on fertilizers off Logan this to me is a such an interesting conversation because we were just thinking about you know supplies of grains because of the war in Ukraine because of extreme weather. But you keep pointing to the fact the fertilizers are an issue right now. Why did we get to this point. And what is next in terms of getting these supplies if you can't get it from Russia. And these are some of the main markers where we could procure this fertilizer. What can we do until we get to 2023. So how we get to this point. Well that's the question. And it probably means that different lesser industry is very concentrated. There are very few countries which are key players and Russia is one of those is the first exporter in the world of nitrogen. The second phosphorus indiscernible. That's right. So clearly if something happens in Russia and what is happening right now they don't export that will affect our level of different letters in the world. So what do we need to do in the future if they find ways in which we can diversify access to fertilizers for example Nigeria companies regulators Mexico companies fertilizers. There are countries which are petroleum exporters of petroleum that will have that capacity and that these are called for action to try to avoid this problem in the future. Now how we resolved the problem now let's assume that Russia keeps export restriction and doesn't then offer to let us to move out. The only way out is for some countries to immediately find ways to resolve these by producing like what Mexico is doing but also no way for try to find alternative ways through which you can pull out differently. Laser from Russian Federation. Luckily Brazil was able to do some transactions and move some of the fertilizers out. But all countries are in urgent need of Haidi Lun. The second option is to increase efficiencies as I mentioned before which is basically using proper roadmaps and. Trying to reduce how you use the fertilizer so that you say and is more efficient in using an appeal. Yeah that's been a great example in this. And the third way is for us is to find they make solutions by quality and by location geographic location. Well how we can delay as much as possible. The highest application of chemical fertilizer. By combining it with manure with organic fertilizers. So now we can give a little bit bigger window until we can resolve the conflict. What he said is that today the world has different. So we come to see the ISE abundance he does in the brain. We have abundant fertilizers and Russian Federation and we can move them out. So we need to solve this problem. But if not we need to find alternatives. Inefficiency Hang Seng.

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UN FAO Urges Countries to Share Information on Food Availability

Maximo Torero, chief economist of the the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization, or FAO, discusses the factors behind the rise in food prices across the globe, and how countries should deal with it. Food protectionism is on the rise in the developing world as governments try to safeguard local supplies, and the effects are threatening to spill over into richer economies. Countries are restricting exports to cope with high prices that have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Torero speaks on "Bloomberg Daybreak: Australia." (Source: Bloomberg)

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