The current conjunctures, namely the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis, created new challenges in the food markets worldwide, because of the pressures in the prices and constraints in the food chains. These frameworks brought additional pressures for already existing problems related to global warming and climate change. In this study, it was intended to analyse the evolution worldwide of food prices over the last few years and to assess the eventual impacts of the pandemic and Russia-Ukraine conflict on these contexts. Statistical information from the FAOSTAT was considered for the period January 2016-September 2022 and the following variables: food price inflation (%); consumer prices, food indices (2015 = 100). The impacts on food prices were greater from the Russia-Ukraine crisis than from the Covid-19 pandemic. This is particularly worrying in more vulnerable countries.
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The recent international events have had multidimensional consequences (Ahoya et al., 2022). The implications on the food markets, including the online ones (Macias et al., 2022), are no an exception (Akber & Paltasingh, 2022). These impacts are true for the following countries, for instance: Bangladesh (Akter et al., 2022); Indonesia (Amin et al., 2022); Nigeria (Ayo-Lawal et al., 2022); India (Bairagi et al., 2022); Mozambique (Bliznashka et al., 2022); Uganda (Buzigi & Onakuse, 2023); BRICST (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and Turkey) countries (Chang et al., 2022); Zimbabwe (Chari et al., 2022); US (Codjia & Saghaian, 2022); Iran (Ghalibaf et al., 2022); Myanmar (Goeb, Maredia, et al., 2022; Goeb, Zone, et al., 2022); South Africa (Hart et al., 2022); Lao PDR (Head et al., 2022); Caribbean countries (Henry et al., 2022); Latin America and the Caribbean (Hernández-Vásquez et al., 2022); Malaysia (Kh’ng et al., 2022); Turkey (Korkmaz Aslan et al., 2022); Russian context (Lialina & Morachevskaya, 2022); China (Liang & Zhong, 2023); Brazil (Lopes et al., 2022); Democratic Republic of the Congo (Manyong et al., 2022); Yemen (Rahmat et al., 2022); France (Recchia et al., 2022); Togo (Sodji, 2022). This is a reality also for the broiler meat markets (Firmansyah et al., 2022), potato (Rajpoot et al., 2022), maize (Nasir et al., 2022) and wheat prices (Martin & Minot, 2022).
These consequences on food prices have occurred during the Russia-Ukraine crisis (Ben Hassen & El Bilali, 2022), but also with the Covid-19 pandemic (Bai et al., 2022). The roots of these food markets implications are in food chains (Carrière-Swallow et al., 2023) and transport routes (Dasgupta & Robinson, 2022) disruptions, suggesting the need for more resilient agri-food supply chains (Das & Roy, 2022). Agricultural production and the accessibilities have here a crucial role (Iheme et al., 2022), as well as the following dimensions: new technologies (Jagtap et al., 2022); public policies (Kaicker et al., 2022); food and agricultural strategies (Munonye et al., 2022); scientific contributions (Nekmahmud, 2022), changes in the consumer behaviour (O’Meara et al., 2022), tourism (Phukamchanoada, 2022); resources markets (Shahini et al., 2022); and food tracking (Mendi, 2022).