Shock propagation from the Russia-Ukraine conflict on international multilayer food production network determines global food availability

TL;DR

This study models how localized agricultural shocks, like the Russia-Ukraine conflict, propagate through global food networks, revealing significant impacts on food availability worldwide and highlighting the importance of considering product conversion and trade relations.

Contribution

It introduces a multilayer network model that captures both direct trade and indirect product conversions, providing a comprehensive analysis of shock propagation in global food systems.

Findings

Ukraine's agricultural loss causes up to 89% loss in sunflower oil

Up to 85% loss in maize due to direct effects

Up to 25% reduction in poultry meat via indirect impacts

Abstract

Dependencies in the global food production network can lead to shortages in numerous regions, as demonstrated by the impacts of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on global food supplies. Here, we reveal the losses of $125$ food products after a localized shock to agricultural production in $192$ countries and territories using a multilayer network model of trade (direct) and conversion of food products (indirect), thereby quantifying $10^8$ shock transmissions. We find that a complete agricultural production loss in Ukraine has heterogeneous impacts on other countries, causing relative losses of up to $89\%$ in sunflower oil and $85\%$ in maize via direct effects, and up to $25\%$ in poultry meat via indirect impacts. Whilst previous studies often treated products in isolation and did not account for product conversion during production, our model studies the global propagation of local supply shocks along both production and trade relations, allowing comparison of different response strategies.