Tensions in Eastern Europe Have Potential to Destabilize Global Food Production

A partner with Polar Pork Farms suggests escalating tensions in eastern Europe have the potential to destabilize food production globally. Reduced feed grain production due to drought last summer in western Canada followed by problems with trucking made accessing feed grain this winter challenging and now the conflict in Ukraine is impacting global grain production.

Florian Possberg, a partner with Polar Pork Farms, says we know that food shortages are one of the main causes of political instability.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork Farms:

Because of the factors in Russia and Ukraine, they're not only big grain producers themselves, wheat and corn and other grains, but they also produce a lot of fertilizer that's used around the globe.

For example, Brazil depends a lot on Russian and Ukrainian fertilizer for their fertilizer supplies and it has an impact on our fertilizer availability here as well. Add to that, there's going to be grainland in Ukraine that isn't put into crop because there's tanks and soldiers all around. That's not a good stable way to produce a crop so the supply of grain from that part of the world is going to be affected as well.

Because of the fertilizer they produce, that's going to have an impact on many other areas. Globally, we have a very intertwined global mechanism of producing food and there's a quite a high likelihood that this is going to impact and cause parts of the food supply to be severely impacted.