GlobalEconomicSince 2020Curatedmedium confidence

Food Price Shocks

Price spikes push tens of millions into hunger faster than any drought.

Severity score

52.3

Severe · default weighting

Trajectory

Steady

What this is

Conflict, export bans, fertiliser costs and extreme weather have produced repeated food price shocks. Import-dependent countries and urban poor households absorb the impact almost immediately, and the political consequences follow within months.

Score breakdown

Loss of life

44

Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.

Lives negatively impacted

84

People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.

Financial cost

62

Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.

Environmental impact

6

Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.

Trajectory

48

Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.