How drought and war are really affecting the global food supply (Wired) 

Wired published an article on how farmers have always fretted about the weather. The challenge for crop experts right now is determining whether droughts and other disturbances—and the crop shortfalls they may cause—add up to a predictable trend. That’s especially important because, while productivity might not look bad overall, there isn’t much surplus grain stock thanks to scattered droughts last year and the supply shock of Ukraine’s breadbasket being temporarily locked out of the global food system. “The key thing about stocks is that, if you have a drought, you can use them to keep prices reasonable—because when they get very low, prices get volatile,” says Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow said, “I think people were hoping that stock levels would be rebuilt, essentially that we’d have really large crops this year. But there are these drought and weather disruptions around the world, though all the shoes haven’t fallen yet.” The global food system exists to allow surpluses to be traded to areas where crops are short. It works, for now. But as weather becomes less predictable and droughts more common, production may become less reliable—and the movement of food to the most vulnerable might grind to a halt. Republished in News Update (New York)