War in Ukraine Is Already Taking Its Toll on Global Food Supplies

With wheat already in the ground, and only a few weeks left to plant corn, farmers in Ukraine can’t get needed fertilizers and chemicals.

In just three weeks, war disrupted Ukraine agriculture, triggering higher prices as well as the threat of global shortages.

Exports are being rerouted, and Ukraine is asking the U.S., Poland, France and others for supplies, said Taras Vysotskyi, Ukraine’s deputy minister of agrarian policy and food.

The war in Ukraine is inflating global food prices that are already at decade highs, largely from the pandemic’s lingering supply-chain troubles.

Over the past two decades, the world’s wheat trade has almost doubled, in large part because of stepped-up exports from Ukraine and Russia, according to the Agricultural Market Information System, a Group of 20 global food policy initiative.

An estimated 25 countries source at least half of their supplies from the two countries, according to AMIS. “It is obviously disconcerting that some countries rely so strongly on Russia and or Ukraine for their wheat supplies,” said Denis Drechsler, a project manager for the group.

Mr. Huizinga farms wheat, barley and sugar beet, and raises livestock in central Ukraine.