Weaponizing Wheat: Moscow’s Menace to Food Security in 2023
Third cBrief with the University of California-San Diego Globalization and Prosperity Lab
Food insecurity was top-of-mind throughout 2022. What about 2023? There is no end in sight to the armed conflict in Ukraine. Both Ukraine and the Russian Federation were major suppliers of wheat to world market before the invasion. What’s at stake if Moscow seeks to weaponize wheat exports during 2023? Using reputable, December 2022 forecasts for wheat harvests during the 2022/23 season, this cBrief presents evidence on Russia's incentive to use three different tools to weaponise international trade in wheat and their likely consequences for the price and volume of wheat shipped to food-importing nations.
This paper deploys a modified version of cModel developed the UCSD team during 2022 to analyse the impact of commercial policy changes that is based on the classic Ricardian model of international trade. Last year the cModel was used to prepare two analyses of the consequences of Western sanctions on the Russian economy. Both can be downloaded from the Reports page of the Global Trade Alert website.
