Impact of the Ukraine – Russia conflict on our food supply chains: what should we be doing?

About the roundtable
The Ukraine-Russia crisis has significant implications for food supply chains. Together Russia and Ukraine account for nearly a third of global wheat exports, 19% of exported corn and 80% of exports of sunflower oil, the third most traded vegetable oil internationally. Sunflower oil is mostly used in the food industry, where it can be segmented into: use as an ingredient in processed foods (e.g. margarine, sauces, mayonnaise, frying, etc) and use as a final product in bottled form as a multi-purpose cooking oil. Additional uses of sunflower oil includes as an emollient in cosmetics formulations. As the conflict continues, the supply of this oil is jeopardized and the industry is challenged to come up with alternatives for this ingredient. Replacing one ingredient with another is not very easy and many aspects such as nutritional quality, food safety (exposure to contaminants), and regulatory issues have to be taken into account. The ramifications of this crisis unfortunately goes way beyond these issues and raise concerns about food security and food fraud amongst others.
This digital roundtable aimed to discuss potential short-term solutions to address the critical supply of oils and other exports as well as longer term actions to improve the resilience of our food system.