Pocas veces fue tan caro comer. En plena escalada inflacionista global, los alimentos se han sumado a una tendencia tan preocupante para el bolsillo de los consumidores —especialmente para los de menores recursos— como para los bancos centrales. La pandemia ha trastocado todas las fichas del dominó económico, y el sector primario no es ni mucho menos ajeno: un inusual y peligroso cóctel de menor oferta y mayor demanda ha elevado en un 30% los precios en origen en solo un año, su nivel más alto en una década, según los datos de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación (FAO).

The precedents are scarce.In nominal terms, it is the highest level in a decade, from the golden age of raw materials.In real terms - if it is related to the evolution of other products of the purchase basket -, you have to go back to the seventies.The economy of that time was another: globalization just began to peel the head, the world was at the dawn of the oil crisis and was lived - it suffered, rather - an inflationist spiral that does not admit parallelisms with our day.

Beyond the level achieved, the most striking is at the speed at which food prices have been fired.“As with bottlenecks in transport, it seems short -term and should not go for very long.But it is a perfect storm in which many things converge at the same time, ”emphasizes Chema Gil, director of the Center for Research and Agrifood Development (CREDA) of Barcelona and Professor of Agricultural Economics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

Although the rise is generalized, there are important differences by products of products: the greatest increase, by far, is the one that affects vegetable oils, which rise 75% since October last year, followed at a great distance from sugar (+40%) and cereals (+22%).The climbing of the latter is especially significant: in addition to being the diet vault key throughout the world, they have a significant drag effect on other product subgroups, such as meat - for being at the base of foodof cattle—, which becomes aware of 22%.

The extraordinary confluence of factors that Gil refers to a very strong stretch of the purchases of the most populous country on the planet, China, who in the first half of the year struggled strongly in the markets to rebuild their strategic reserves.Also for an increase in the demand for biofuels (ethanol, biodiesel), which are much more attractive with energy at maximum, such as today, and that they press both sugar and oils.And for a lower supply than usual in some of the world's largest food producers due to climatic factors: floods in Asia, drought in Brazil - the worst in almost a century - Russia and in several US states.The recent increase - this, unprecedented - of fertilizers, a key element in the agricultural cost matrix and whose price dances to the sound of natural gas, has finished adding Chile to an already spicy sauce.

Money calls money, and nobody wants to run out of your piece of cake.With food markets in bullish trajectory and tons of liquidity in search of destination, speculation has grown strongly in food markets.This phenomenon of "growing financing", in the words of Brigit Busicchia, professor of the Macquarie University of Sydney (Australia), "is disturbing the traditional foundations of supply and demand in the primary sector, and is amplifying the fluctuations" of prices.The food, endorses on the other side of the Ervin Prifti telephone line, senior economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) specialized in agricultural and food security issues, is an asset like any other.“And just like money flows to other markets, it also does it, contributing to the climb.How many?You still can't know, but it is certainly affecting ".

FAO figures collect only the evolution of prices at origin, not at destination.For the photo to be complete, therefore, the brutal rise in the transport costs derived from global traffic jam and the —igually brutal - increase in oil in recent times in recent times in recent times in recent times.And energy and food, as Busicchia remembers, have always been closely linked, almost intertwined.This time is no exception.On average - like all stockings, it also hides large differences: the countries that have to import the most suffer from a greater increase - for every five dollars of food rise in international markets, the prices paid by final consumers increase inone, according to Prifti figures.So, since the accumulated increase in the last year is around 30%, the recharge that households would endure would be around 6%.

First effects

The flood, says the background coach, will take between six and 12 months to arrive in all its extension to the invoice that falls on the consumer.So the increase - which began last spring - only begins to be noticed now in the linear of the supermarkets."In the next time we will continue to see uploads on the bill we pay for food," predicts.An appreciation in which Haque coincides, that glimpses a "real risk" that the cost pressure that farmers and farmers are suffering keep prices at "high levels" for at least one more year: "If farmers cannot affordBuy enough fertilizer, the crops will suffer again what happens with the weather ”.

The coup of food inflation is so regressive - he affects those who have less - as asymmetric in the geographical.In the rich world, the poorest layers of the population have those of losing: food is a greater fraction of their expenses and, therefore, their increase subtracts a greater purchase power.The most wealthy, while, will barely notice the rise: for them the supermarket invoice has a residual importance about their total expenses.However, the Mollar problem is in the nations of medium income, where import dependence is greater and much of the population is severely hit by any increase in the purchase basket.It is a constant, Jayson l abounds.Lusk, head of the Department of Agricultural Economy of the Purdue University (Indiana, USA): "Food price increases always disproportionately affect the welfare of people (and countries) of lower income".

This divergence also arrives at a critical moment, after a pandemic that has aggravated inequality in all its aspects: between individuals, but also between countries and blocks.And in full postcovid recovery, which marches not to one but a thousand speeds and in which development nations are lagging behind their high rental peers."The rich block produces more food and more diversified," explains Gil."The EU and the US have self -supply for almost all products, and that makes them less harmed.".A result in which, in the case of Europe, the subsidies of common agricultural policy (PAC) have had much to do."However, in most emerging it is not like that: even those who are exporters, are very competitive in one, two or three commodities, but they have to import the rest," Aquilata the CREDA director.

The importing agency leaves three regions with all to lose at this juncture: Latin America - with two great provisions: Brazil and Argentina, which not only are not at the Albur of international prices, but are among the world's largest exporters of meatof beey, soybean, corn or coffee—, northern and nearby east Africa.But even in Brazilian and Argentine cases, things look worse than one would expect: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of the United States has just predicted 90% probability that the climatological phenomenon ofThe girl, who usually aggravates droughts and reduces crops in the American South cone.

The rebound of food is also having an important unwanted effect on inflation.It occurs in all globe countries, in which food is even putting pressure on the backs of central banks, which are discussed these days between raising interest rates to try to quell the price increase or keep them to avoid putting aPaler more at the recovery wheel.But, again, while in the rich block the price of food rises at a lower rate than the general index, emerging countries are taking the worst part.So much so that in a good number of cases they are already having to raise interest rates to contain the wave.

Three names embody this trend.Brazil, a country in which, although beneficiary in the macro - it exports much more food than matters -, the food spending of households has increased double digit (about 12%) in the last year, the IPC ridesabove 10% and had to increase the price of money by 1.5 points of a cup, the largest rise in two decades.Mexico, where the last four meetings of the issuing institute have resulted in increases in interest rates and life is more than ever more than ever in the last two decades: the general price index rises 7% in 12 months, with energyand food as catalysts.And South Africa, which has been forced to press the monetary standardization key even though the rebound of its economy continues to hit a thread, partly by food inflation, and that the last variant of the virus threatens with new restrictions.

Energy rise

But not only: in Indonesia or in Russia, two winging countries in the block, the food is adding an additional dose of pressure on prices fired by the increase in energy."The modernization and urbanization of emerging economies has further increased their vulnerability," says Busicchia."The transition from a rural lifestyle to an urban one has led to changes in the food practices of the middle class and to a greater dependence on imported products and is one of the key factors that demand are pressing the demand".

Even more raw is the situation in the poorest countries, where most of the nearly 800 million people who suffer malnutrition in the world live, according to UNICEF.And where we must add a factor that aggravates the problem of food: the recent strength of the dollar - the currency in which practically all raw materials - in front of their coins, which increases even more prices.Although no government has still chosen to restrict exports to ensure the food security of its population, as it did a decade ago, nobody dares to rule it out at all.“If you stay in a conjunctural climb, you will not reach that extreme.But if it extends, we will see it, ”predicts the director of CREDA, Chema Gil.

So far, the conjunctural: it will spend more or less time, but those clouds will dissipate.Some substantive dynamics, however, have arrived to stay, disrupting the entire food production chain.The main one is climate change, which is making droughts, floods, heat waves or hurricanes more recurring.Phenomena, all of them, devastating for farmers and ranchers.

"Traditional crop patterns are changing and there is a very high risk that production falls," says Peter Batt, agribusiness specialist at the Australian Business School Curtin Business School, which points to water - a liquid consumed today in more than 70%For the primary sector - as a great restrictive factor.A rise with two degrees Celsius in the global average temperature would lead to almost 190 million people to higher levels of vulnerability than those who suffer today, according to the latest data on the World Food Program.If the increase triggered up to four degrees, an almost apocalyptic scene but not disposable if decarbonization is not accelerated, that figure would shoot until 1.800 million people.

And then there is the demography.Although the growth rate is slowing down year after year, the projections of the United Nations speak for themselves: in four decades, the world food demand is on their way to grow between 30% and 50%, while the offer riskscontract up to 30% in the most adverse scenarios of global warming.“How are we going to do when the world population goes from 7.000 to 9.000 million people? ”Batt wonders rhetorically.Food production, he says, will have to double.Not only for the demographic jump but because, as the available income rises, the weight in the diet of the meat or dairy - a lot more intensive in natural resources - increases exponentially.The rapid technological evolution insufflates Esperanza, but few elements invite optimism.