Global Food Prices Are Turning Conflict Into Hunger

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Food prices are not just an economic indicator. In many parts of the world, they decide whether a family eats less, pulls a child out of school, sells productive assets, skips medical care, or falls into hunger that is difficult to escape.

The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises shows how severe this has become. In 2025, about 266 million people across 47 countries and territories faced high levels of acute food insecurity. That means they were not simply “struggling with prices.” They needed urgent assistance to protect lives and livelihoods. The share of people facing this level of hunger has nearly doubled since 2016, and the crisis has remained above 20 percent of the analysed population since 2020.

At InsightArea, I often look at problems through systems: biology, economics, technology, conflict, incentives, feedback loops. Global hunger is exactly that kind of problem. It is not caused by one bad harvest or one price spike. It is the result of several pressures reinforcing each other.

Conflict remains the main driver

The most important fact is also the most uncomfortable one: conflict remains the primary driver of acute food insecurity and malnutrition.

In 2025, famine was identified in Gaza Governorate and parts of Sudan. According to the Global Report on Food Crises, this was the first time since formal GRFC reporting began that famine was confirmed in two separate contexts in the same year. These were not ordinary food shortages. They were extreme hunger events shaped by war, restricted humanitarian access, displacement, and the collapse of normal life-supporting systems.

Conflict damages food systems in several ways at once. It destroys farms, roads, storage facilities, markets, ports, electricity systems, hospitals, and household income. It also makes aid harder or impossible to deliver. When people flee, they often lose land, work, tools, livestock, social networks, and access to regular markets. A food crisis then becomes a displacement crisis, a health crisis, and a childhood development crisis at the same time.

Why higher global food prices hurt poor households first

Food inflation is painful everywhere, but it does not hit everyone equally.

In wealthier countries, food is usually a smaller share of household spending. People may complain about grocery prices, and often reasonably so, but many still have some room to adjust. In low-income countries, that room may not exist. The IMF notes that people in low-income developing countries spend about 43 percent of consumption on food on average, compared with around 25 percent in emerging market economies and 12 percent in advanced economies.

That difference matters. A 10 percent increase in food prices is not the same event for everyone. For a household already spending half its income on food, a price increase can mean fewer meals, cheaper and less nutritious foods, more debt, or selling the assets needed to earn tomorrow’s income.

The Strait of Hormuz problem: food prices are also energy prices

One reason the 2026 situation is especially fragile is that food prices are being pushed by energy, fertilizer, and freight costs.

FAO reported that its Food Price Index rose in March 2026 for the second month in a row, reaching 128.5 points, up 2.4 percent from February and 1 percent above the level from a year earlier. FAO connected this increase partly to higher energy prices linked to conflict escalation in the Near East.

This matters because modern agriculture depends heavily on energy. Fuel powers tractors, irrigation, processing, transport, refrigeration, and shipping. Natural gas is also a key input for nitrogen fertilizers. When energy gets more expensive, fertilizer often gets more expensive too. When fertilizer gets more expensive, farmers may reduce application, shift crops, plant less, or accept lower yields.

The Strait of Hormuz adds another layer. The IMF has described a de facto closure of the strait and noted that about one-third of fertilizer shipments pass through it. CSIS gives a similar but slightly more cautious range, estimating that before the war, about 20 to 30 percent of global fertilizer exports transited the Strait of Hormuz, including important shares of ammonia, urea, and phosphates.

FAO’s Chief Economist warned that global fertilizer prices could average 15 to 20 percent higher in the first half of 2026 if the crisis persists. That does not immediately mean every country runs out of food. Stocks still matter, local harvests still matter, and policy choices still matter. But it does mean the food system becomes more expensive and more fragile, especially for countries that import both food and fertilizer.

Humanitarian aid is shrinking while needs stay high

There is another pressure point: aid funding.

The World Food Programme reported in 2025 that projected resources were dropping by 34 percent compared with 2024. It warned that this would force reductions in emergency food assistance affecting up to 16.7 million people, a 21 percent reduction from the 79.9 million people assisted in 2024.

This is a dangerous kind of timing. When prices rise, more people need help. When conflict blocks markets and destroys livelihoods, more people need help. But if funding falls at the same time, the system has to ration assistance more harshly. That can push people from crisis into emergency, and from emergency closer to famine.

Children are carrying a large part of the cost

The numbers on children are especially difficult to read.

In 2025, the GRFC estimated that 35.5 million children aged 6 to 59 months were acutely malnourished across countries and territories with nutrition crises. Around 10 million of them suffered from severe acute malnutrition and needed urgent treatment.

This is not only about hunger today. Malnutrition in early childhood can affect immunity, development, learning, and long-term health. A food crisis can therefore keep producing damage long after prices stabilize or fighting pauses.

The vicious circle: small farmers can be hurt by high food prices too

It can sound strange at first: if food prices rise, shouldn’t farmers benefit?

Sometimes they do. But many smallholder farmers are also buyers of food, fuel, fertilizer, seeds, tools, and transport. If fertilizer prices rise faster than crop income, they may plant less or use fewer inputs. If conflict blocks roads or markets, they may not be able to sell at a fair price. If drought or insecurity damages a harvest, high food prices do not help the farmer who has little to sell.

This is where the hunger system becomes circular. Farmers cannot afford inputs, so production falls. Lower production can raise prices. Higher prices make food less affordable for consumers and inputs less affordable for farmers. Without intervention, the next season starts weaker than the last one.

What would actually reduce the risk?

There is no single clean fix. But the direction is clear.

First, conflict-driven hunger cannot be solved only with food aid. Food aid saves lives, but it cannot replace political action, safe humanitarian access, functioning markets, and protection of civilians.

Second, fertilizer and energy shocks need to be treated as food-security risks, not only trade or inflation problems. When a shipping corridor, fuel market, or fertilizer supply chain breaks, the effect may appear months later in planting decisions and harvest yields.

Third, humanitarian funding matters most before the worst point is reached. Once famine conditions appear, the cost is already human, biological, and often irreversible.

Fourth, local food production and resilience cannot be an afterthought. Countries exposed to repeated shocks need stronger storage, diversified fertilizer access, climate adaptation, rural credit, early warning systems, and support for small producers.

The larger lesson

The global food crisis is not simply about food. It is about how connected our systems are.

A war can raise energy prices. Energy prices can raise fertilizer costs. Fertilizer costs can change planting decisions. Lower yields can push food prices higher. Higher food prices can force poor households to eat less, sell assets, or remove children from school. Aid cuts can then make the same shock much more lethal.

That is the part worth understanding clearly. Hunger is often described as if it were a natural disaster. Sometimes weather is involved, of course. But the worst hunger crises are usually shaped by human decisions: war, blocked access, underfunded responses, fragile supply chains, and delayed action.

For Costin Liculescu and InsightArea, this is the kind of topic where science, economics, politics, and systems thinking meet. The hard part is not only seeing the numbers. It is seeing the chain that connects them.