The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) warns in a new position paper released at the World Bank Group-IMF Spring Meetings that conflict in the Middle East is creating severe disruptions for smallholder farmers and producers around the world and exposing the global food system’s structural vulnerabilities to external shocks.
Based on IFAD’s ground-level view working with local producers and small-scale agricultural businesses, Global Shock, Local Crisis: Smallholder farmers and producers again under strain, lays out how this crisis is already being absorbed by small-holder farmers who produce a third of the world’s food.
Building long-term resilience to recurrent shocks
As policymakers and finance ministers gather in Washington, the paper presents IFAD’s proven solutions to building long-term resilience to recurrent shocks at the “first mile” of global food systems, and calls investments in resilient rural economies a geostrategic imperative for stable global food value chains in an era of geopolitical, climate, and environmental volatility.
IFAD’s presence on the ground, working with local producers and small-scale agricultural businesses, offers a ground-level view of how this crisis is already being absorbed where it hurts most. What that evidence consistently shows is that food crises are not triggered at the farm, but they land there.
The following examples illustrate what that means in practice.
In Sri Lanka, the conflict triggered an energy crisis that is crippling the current paddy harvesting season. A strict fuel quota system using QR codes is in place, and many pumps have shut down entirely. Farmers are unable to power irrigation pumps or distribute machinery.
Roughly 16 per cent of the population is already food‑insecure. Local urea prices have moved from around $350/mt pre-conflict to $700/mt within weeks, and are still rising.
Livestock farmers are also being negatively affected. In Kenya, government figures indicate that meat exports to the Middle East worth roughly $2.3 million per week are currently at risk, with Ramadan shipments to Gulf markets falling to well below 5% expected volumes.
The UAE alone accounts for an estimated 40‑60% of Kenya’s meat exports. However, the crisis also affects domestic markets, stated the report.
Exporters unable to move their products abroad are diverting meat into local channels at lower prices, creating downward pressure on farmgate prices, slowing livestock offtake and straining trader networks, it stated.
Global food system vulnerable
This conflict has highlighted how vulnerable the global food system is to external shocks. Building resilience in the first mile of food value chains is key to mitigating the impacts of similar shocks in the future.
Investing in small-scale food producers and rural entrepreneurs strengthens stability and drives economic growth and jobs. Resilient rural economies are a geostrategic imperative for stable global food value chains in an era of geopolitical, climate and environmental volatility.
What this crisis has shown is that supply chain resilience begins at the source and ignoring the first mile increases national economic risk, stated the IFAD report.
Limited strategic reserves and first mile storage infrastructure allow external shocks to be transmitted rapidly to domestic markets, it stated.
This is not the first, nor will it be the last crisis that severely impacts food systems around the world. What we have learned in responding to such crises is that it is crucial to keep building resilience into the system and planning for further such contingencies, if we are not to lose the development gains that have already accrued to small-scale producers and the local markets in which they operate, said the IFAD report .
Precisely because these crises are recurrent and external shocks are inevitable, the best contribution we can make is to help small-scale producers become more resilient over time.
In response, IFAD is reactivating its Crisis Response Initiative to deliver rapid, targeted support that protects rural livelihoods and stabilizes food production.
Concurrently, IFAD is activating the Response to Emergency and Disaster (RED) mechanism within ongoing programmes to enable faster disbursements, procurement and operational reprioritisation. Together, these instruments allow IFAD to meet immediate crisis needs while safeguarding longer‑term development outcomes
Every crisis of this kind follows the same pattern: the shock originates in global markets, but it is then absorbed by the people least able to bear it – rural people and small-scale producers with no buffer stocks, no insurance and limited alternatives.
Investing in rural resilience before the next shock arrives should not be a development priority competing with others. It is the precondition for preserving the gains we have already made, and the only way to ensure they survive the next crisis…and the one after that. IFAD has a distinct capability in supporting governments to make these investments, before crises reach markets – and before the markets reach breaking point.
