Perhaps not everyone knows that some of the international conflicts and crises that affect our time have their focal point in the possession of cereal reserves. These, including grain, corn, rice, barley, oatsfrom the era of subsistence agriculture until today they have always occupied a fundamental position in diet of humans. Even in the modern industrial economy they have carved out a place of primary importance for themselves, considering in addition thelivestock feeding and the production of products of various types. Precisely because of their crucial role, it is not surprising that they have been at the center of struggles and disputes in various parts of the world.
The cereal market in the world
Before moving on to the analysis of how cereals have impacted human history, let’s take a quick overview of the main cereals (wheat, corn and rice) to understand what their main Producing, exporting and importing countries starting from the data published on FAOSTAT and expressed in tonnes of product (referring to the year 2022). Let’s start with grain:
Interesting to note how the China is both the world’s largest producer and the largest importer, which means that it cannot satisfy its domestic needs alone. USA And Australia on the other hand, their production is also very export-oriented. Let’s move on to corn:
Also in this case we have the China which is unable to satisfy its internal needs, while other countries (USA, Brazil And Argentinafor example) manage to export a good quantity of their production. Relevant (we will see in the last paragraph the how and why) is the role ofUkraine in the top 5 of world exporters. Finally we come to rice:
In this case we have Asian dominance in production, with theIndia which even manages to export a small share of what is cultivated.
The importance of cereal cultivation for the development of great civilizations
We therefore come to a brief historical summary of the importance of cereals for humanity and let’s start by saying that it is not clear the exact moment in which the domestication of cereal species (also because this process affected different human communities for various cereal species scattered around the world). The prevailing consensus is that this process occurred around 10,000 years agoduring the so-called “Neolithic Revolution”. It was in that period that hierarchically organized communities of individuals would transition from a situation in which their diet was essentially based on meat to one based on agricultural products.
In this context, the different species of cereals played a fundamental role in the development of the great ancient civilizations. In fact, the production of cereals allowed the ancients to have access to a agricultural surplus which formed the first basis for the development of material civilization. By restricting the field of analysis to only the most famous species, it is not difficult to understand that the grain played a fundamental role in the flowering of Mesopotamian civilizations and that of the ancient Egyptians. In the Far East however it was the rice the main architect of the rise ofChinese Empire and of theKhmer Empirejust to name a few. The cornfinally, played an irreplaceable role in the development of Amerindian civilization (Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, etc…)
Industrial agriculture to support population growth
Moving on to current events, it can be said that agriculture has now become to all intents and purposes aindustrial type activities. The innovations introduced by the so-called “Green Revolution” have made it possible to significantly increase the cereal production globally in parallel with the incredible demographic growth of the human population. In fact, by consulting the data of FAOwe see that if global cereal production was over 936 million tons In the 1961In the 2019 it had jumped to almost 3 billion tons.
This growth has had an impact not only on food security of the human population (fortunately in slow but continuous growth), but it has allowed us to also increase breeding activities (with environmental problems) because the excess surplus from cereal production could be diverted to animal feed. In fact, not everyone knows that a significant percentage of global corn production, for example, is not intended for human consumption, but ends up in cattle feed.
The effects of the Russian-Ukrainian War on the grain market
Unfortunately, exactly as happened with precious metals, hydrocarbons and water, cereals now also risk becoming a new focal point of international geopolitical competition. Already at the end of 2021, due to the negative effects that climate change is having on the band between the Tropic of Cancer and that of Capricorn, there were over 100 million Africans who lived in a situation of extreme hardship and food insecurity. Their situation even became catastrophic after the outbreak Russian-Ukrainian war and the beginning of global food crisis that it caused.
The situation is particularly delicate, then, for example, in Horn of Africa where the chronic instability of the states of the area, the recurrent droughts and the poor mechanization of agriculture, in addition to the increase in prices generated by the Russian-Ukrainian war and the average increase in inflation at a global level, risks causing a humanitarian disaster (in Somalia alone about half the population is at risk of famine).
However, one should not think that the Russian-Ukrainian war created problems only for sub-Saharan countries. Going to consult data prior to the conflict in fact it turns out that, al 2021they were about about fifty the countries that depended on Russia and Ukraine for a 30% of their imports of wheat, with Egypt, Türkiye, Bangladesh and Iran that mattered more than 60% of their needs by the two countries that later went to war (at the time Russia and Ukraine produced around 15% of the world’s needs for “soft wheat”).
The question of the so-called is slightly different “durum wheat” (to be clear, the one used by Italians to produce pasta) given that, on the eve of the aforementioned war, almost a quarter of global output was supplied by EU countries. Yet what intervened in this case was the drought which had the effect of damaging the large North American producers (United States and Canada) who saw their market shares contract between 2020 and 2021 from 24.2% to 10.5%thus favoring the rise of North African producers (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), past from the 13.4% to 16.7% at a time, however, in which Morocco and Algeria are engaged in one arms race which does not bode well for the stability of the Maghreb area.
