Analysis | Swine fever, climate change, Armyworm: a perfect storm for Asia’s food prices
- Global food prices recently hit a five-year peak but a variety of factors mean the worst may be yet to come
- Asia is acutely vulnerable, and governments may have to reconsider their policies in response
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in its report on Thursday indicated global food prices have risen to their highest in five years. There are many factors but a mixture of biology-related and climate-related phenomena suggest this trend may continue.
These increases were fuelled by recent surges in the price of vegetable oils, sugar and dairy, as well as some increases in cereals. Meat prices increased the most steadily of all the food types monitored by the FAO. Overall, these increases will force lower-income families to forego food purchases, leading to negative nutrition effects.
In 2019, more than 6 million pigs were culled from supply chains and millions more died due to African Swine Fever (ASF), thousands of hectares of corn have been devoured by an insect, and prolonged drought and fire have destroyed crop, grazing lands and livestock in Australia. Such stresses on food systems could foreshadow a period of even higher prices in 2020.
African Swine Fever and other viruses
Domestic pig industries have been disrupted since ASF spread from Kenya through Eastern Europe into Asia. After showing up in August 2018 in China’s Liaoning Province, the highly contagious virus spread to nine other Asian countries.
In China alone, the pig population is estimated to have been reduced by half. This has caused a rise in pork prices and increased demand for other meats. The FAO characterised this as the largest animal disease outbreak in history and it shows no signs of abating.
ASF is not known to cross species lines or infect humans but that may not be the case with other animal viruses. The last known outbreak of a human disease caused by an animal virus was the Avian Flu in 1997 in Hong Kong, caused by the H5N1 virus, which killed six people. The FAO has warned of an ongoing threat to bird and human health and the Avian Flu H5N8 virus was recently detected in turkeys in Eastern Poland, where 40,000 birds were slaughtered. This virus can also affect humans.
Fall Armyworm and other insects
Crops have not been spared. The destructive insect pest known as Fall Armyworm (FAW) first appeared in Asia in 2018 and spread from India to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and China, destroying thousands of hectares of corn, both food and feed corn.