around the world, but also threatening the return of higher globalfood prices. as record heat waves set off wildfires in europe, as hot weather followed by floods force india to ban some rice exports and put parts of china under water. and as russia starts to bomb grain silos in ukraine, could we start seeing food shortages in some parts of the world and rising food prices everywhere? if anyone knows, it's this week's line up. they are a commodities expert who's always kept us ahead of the curve on prices. and the big boss of one of the world's biggest freight transport companies is going to tell us how costs and concerns are shaping his industry. also on the show, she's the big boss of one of the world's biggest retailers.

the ceo and president of walmart internationaljoins me to talk prices, retailand retail from india to china. wherever you'rejoining me from around the world, once again, a big hello and a warm welcome to the show. you know, just as the rising cost of things were starting to slow down, you know, inflation officially getting lower in most major economies, some severe shocks have come into the food market. in one week, injuly alone, the world's three hottest days ever were recorded. this is the island of rhodes in greece. holidaymakers, they had to flee wildfires. but the impact of this heat wave, well, it's doing more than wrecking people's vacations. this is the scene in uruguay, in south america. it is a historic drought. it's never been so serious. if the rains don't come now,

we are likely to lose all crops. in other words, we won't have any fruit for next year. it means that many farm households will suffer losses. in georgia, in the south of the united states, the famous peaches are in trouble. we like people come out here and pick. but as you can see, there's not a single, single peach anywhere on the tree in spain, on the island of la palma. farmers there surveying the damage. everything was surrounded by fire. maybe a third of the vineyard has been lost. and even in iraq, harvests are under threat. we did not expect this. i wouldn't say the heatwave impacted us 100%, but affected the crop by 70%. this was unexpected and it did not leave any green spaces available in india. available. in india hot weather and irregular monsoons have threatened the rice crops. the government there has banned

the export of most types of rice to keep the country fed. and let's remember, india is responsible for 40% of the world's rice exports. and then adding to all that price pressure, russia withdrew its support of the grain deal, which allowed ukraine to supply grain to the global south and beyond. the united nations is concerned about notjust food prices, but people surviving. some will go hungry, some will starve. many may die as a result of these decisions. and we implore this council and the world beyond it to help to make every effort to restore the spirit. what the secretary general at the time referred to as the beacon of hope that those two agreements represented for all of us in a world of such difficulty and tragedy. so what does all of this mean for ourfood prices? well, my first guest, she's a bit of a regular on the show because her predictions of where food and commodity prices are headed have consistently been accurate.

she's the head of research at the global commodities merchant ed&f man khona laskar hak. always a pleasure having you on the show. and let me start with this because we had seen prices dipping and correct me if i'm wrong, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. no, that's correct. we've had a series of events over the last few weeks which have caused prices to suddenly escalate again. price for rice were already rising quite a bit. in fact, we've reached two year highs lately, and the reason for that is because unusual weather, particularly hot weather in asia, and this has caused crops, particularly rice yields, to suffer. so india, which is worried about domestic food inflation, decided that they would put a ban on rice exports and therefore hope in the hope that their own domestic prices would therefore start to stabilize, irrespective of what happens to global rice prices. so that's definitely an impact on rice. but here in europe, we're seeing an issue with grains because the black sea is home to probably a quarter of the world supplies of wheat and corn. and it's notjust limited of wheat and corn.

ukraine is probably the world's largest sunflowers exporter. barley, oats, corn. these are massive commodities that all come out of ukraine. and ukraine was heavily reliant on the black sea port for an avenue through which they can ship these crops out. and as we know, we've seen inflation or the cost of living rise in most of the global north. and as we know, that's forced central banks to to raise interest rates. what's the impact of today's picture? what's that going to the impact that is going to have on inflation and rates, do you think? so, yes, we've had almost a year and a half now of rising central bank interest rates. and so the cost of borrowing has gone up, the cost of living has gone up. inflation meant that the savings rates are depleting quite rapidly. people are no longer feeling as rich as they were maybe straight after the pandemic when they had built up quite a large pile of excess savings. those have been rapidly depleted,

which means that their ability to consume is probably being dented compared to where we were two years ago. so i think the economies are slowing, but that's exactly what central banks are doing. they're wanting to tighten the monetary side of things in order to engineer a slowdown. but by engineering a slow down, you're causing consumers to lose confidence, which means their purchasing power is going to decline and maybe they will not be able to stomach any further hikes in prices. so when food inflation continues to hurt their wallets, they may just have to back off and either substitute towards a lower priced substitute or even reduce their demand outright. so i think the pain is here, unfortunately, and it's it's a bit concerning. and in parts of the global south, they're talking about famine. is that something you could see happening? famine is unfortunately something that's been growing since the pandemic. you know, poverty levels, which have been declining globally,

have actually stopped declining because of the effects of the pandemic, but also since then, the global inflation. and you're right, food inflation is so prevalent in these parts of the world, not only because food prices are going up, as we've been mentioning, but also because the cost of importing these have gone up so much. the cost of transporting and shipping these costs has gone up so much. and these... the global south are really struggling to get hold of dollars and hard currency. commodities and foods are pretty much always denominated in us dollars. and the fact that these countries are struggling to get hold of dollars in order to import this is really putting a strain on those economies. so i think the famine, i mean, governments will do what they can to try and avoid it. and this is exactly what india is doing. they're trying to avoid domestic food inflation, but i'm afraid parts of africa and the very, very poorest of countries may see the poor really struggle with access to food and at these levels of prices.

and as you know, some will say, look, this happens every year, not to get too dramatic about it all, but is that the case? no, i would argue that we haven't had food inflation the way we have seen the last year or so. we haven't had something like this for decades. in fact, in the mid 2010s, for example, we saw food prices really historically quite low on a real basis. so this for me is a concern because one thing we're seeing globally now is extreme climatic events, whether it's the heat in europe or the drought or the floods in asia, these are supposedly going to become more and more common with climate change, which basically puts a massive risk on crop yields and therefore the ability to grow food quickly and now in sufficient quantities around the world to meet the needs for the growing populations. i think it is something we need to keep an eye out on,

but obviously if food prices stay high, it also does incentivize producers to be planting more of that stuff. it's just that they need weather to comply as well. well, on that, not so rosy point, always great to see you. thanks for your time and we'll talk to you soon. thank you so much. okay. so once the crops have grown, they have to get around the world. and only recently, the supply chains, they were gripped in chaos following the covid pandemic. so how is all of this now playing out? well, my next guest runs one of the biggest freight, shipping and transport companies in the world. jeremy nickson, good to see you and thanks forjoining us. and jeremy, let's start with this because we've seen all these heat waves and floods and export bans on rice from india. just to take a few examples, i'm wondering how is that playing out

in terms of transporting goods and the costs and i thinkjust generally in terms of of crops, you know, we move a lot of products still in containers which are commodity related. so, you know, for example, the rice ban in india the last couple ban in india in the last couple of weeks, i mean, as an industry, we move actually a lot of rice in containers. and so we won't be moving so many containers of rice out of india. but the final markets where that indian rice was being consumed will now have to source rice out of other markets. so the product will still have to move. and it's very similar with the fruit and vegetables, the proteins and the meats that we move. we often see some seasonality reason or some political tariffs coming in in one particular location, and therefore countries stop sourcing from one particular country or region, but they have to source from somewhere else. so fundamentally, we have the flexibility to move our containers around the world on different networks to be able to keep that flow going. but on the land side operation, we continue to see increasing inflationary costs coming through on transport costs, labor through on transport costs, labour costs, we've had a number of quite

large renegotiations to do with the salaries on transport workers on the land side operations, and all of that comes through as additional costs to the supply chain. so we have to factor that in. on the ocean side, we've, ithink, done a lot of innovation on shipping to to stretch those and more tonnes or containers onto ships with using less and less fuel. but we're pretty running much running out of runway on the line economics of doing that. and we will now have to go to these new greener fuels, which are also, be it more expensive in the future.

we've also seen russia not only pull out of the grain export agreement with ukraine, but literally bomb the ports and the warehouses there. i mean, for the many countries, especially in the global south, that relied on ukrainian grain, they're going to have to once again turn to other sources. does that have an impact on your business? and again, the costs probably not. so much grain is moving in containers. some does, but primarily it's moving in these specialist type bulk ships. but the fact that the grain now has to is still required in africa or required in the indian subcontinent or required elsewhere. it'll have to be routed in a different way. and it means that these big ships can't get alongside the harbours. they'll have to move the cargo overland to other port locations, potentially hundreds of kilometres or even 1000 kilometres away. or even 1,000 kilometres away. that is going to have a big impact on on that supply chain in terms of additional cost, but also in terms of extra transit time as well. but in terms of the container business in russia, first of all, we don't do business with russia anymore because of the sanctions, but the business that we are moving in and out of ukraine, of course, we can't bring our container ships now up through the black sea and to the ukrainian ports anymore. we're having to move that

to other ports in the region and then that cargo is then getting deveined out of containers and then it's having to move by other land transport systems and that is all adding additional cost and and transit time to those products. so in some cases, probably adding two or three times the cost of conventionally moving it with a point to point or port to port container shipping operation. and jeremy, let me end on this. you and i have spoken before over the past few years about the whole supply chain chaos and how that sent the transportation costs through the roof. but eventually they came down. and now some in your industry say the prices have come down so much, it's just not sustainable. is that your view? well, i think certainly there's two factors there. one is that there's no doubt that the supply and demand squeeze was very tight during 2021 to 2022, and we saw freight rates much higher than the normal industry average. we've had a rebalancing in 2203 due

to an inventory overhang, so the sales to eventually ratios have been quite high. our customers are gradually burning through those inventories and we'll start their reordering cycles quite soon. and when that happens, some of the spot market rates will start to move up again. but the area that probably, you know, is the most important longer term is is that as and when we move longer term is that as and when we move to these green fuels, it will be unsustainable to be able to operate the ships at the same freight rates as we do today when the fuel costs are 200% to 300% more. so we will need to move the freight rates up in line with those higher fuel costs because of the green fuels. but i think if we do that in a transparent way and we do that in a clear way, customers will understand that and everybody can understand that the cost is more and we can be transparent and we could pass that on down through the supply chain to make sure that all the products that we buy in the future as consumers will have a much, much lower footprint than they do today in terms of carbon intensity. well, on that point, jeremy nixon,

the big boss of ocean network express, always good to see you. thanks for your time and i'll check in with you soon. so so far in the show, we've been talking about the new threats to food supply and how they could drive up prices. and that could mean anything from starvation for some to rising costs of living and interest rates for others. one thing is that it might touch everyone on the planet. and i tell you what, many, many people around the world also shop using my next guest company. we're talking wal—mart. it's the biggest retailer in the world, and she's in charge of the entire business outside of the united states. judith mckenna, a real pleasure having you on my show. and judith, on this week's show, we've been talking about the impact of extreme weather on food prices, including the ban of most rice exports from india. and just at a time, judith, when we started to see

food prices falling, do you think prices will inevitably start rising again? hi, aaron. it's a pleasure to be here. listen, i think the world, the economy, this confliction of events that have happened between whether the challenges in europe with ukraine and everything that's been going on is putting real pressure around the world on pricing forfood. like what we're seeing in markets around the world is a two year stack of inflation where we operate still running stubbornly at around a 20 to 30% on that two year basis. we're seeing some moderation in kind of current prices, but it's not enough for people to really feel that in their pockets yet. so i think there's a lot still to play out in this space. we're doing our part, very much being thoughtful about where we source and how we source, making sure we've got surety of supply of everything that we've got. how unusual do you think these events are? i mean, let's, for example, the heat waves. i won't give my age away, but i've been around a long time and i don't think any of us

have ever seen anything quite like this. and the current heat waves, the current climate impact is concerning for everyone. how are you finding consumers, how they are reacting to inflation across the the international markets that you operate in? yeah, we have this saying here in walmart international, which is people are more common than they are different. and that's certainly been true around the world as people have seen inflation bite into their daily household budgets. and what's interesting to us is you're seeing some trends within that, that no matter where you are, they can be slightly different because of the way governments reacted during covid, whether people had savings or not. but in the main, we're seeing people really walking towards value. value is increasingly important to everybody everywhere around the world. but interesting with that, people also don't want to compromise on convenience. so it's actually people are still going omnichannel, doing digital shopping. they're using the apps, they're getting things delivered to them.

and in fact, in a couple of our markets, we've got some information that some of our customers are clubbing together to buy products, get a delivery to their local area, and handing it out to everybody that's there. they're saving on fuel by doing that. people still want to treat themselves at christmas and that might still be a hangover from the pandemic were people still unable to do those things. and judith, i'm just wondering, do you see the rising costs

threatening your targets? because and correct me if i'm wrong here, but but you've said you want to double your volume of business to around $200 billion in five years. i'm just wondering, again, if these international events could could impact on that target world events. economies always have an impact on businesses. but when you look at the target we set for that, which is over a five year period and think about the businesses that we have around the world, you know, our businesses reach out to about 40% of the world's population through the countries that we that we operate in. that we that we operate in i think that we're still very confident about being able to get there. and as we know, wal—mart, it's very well known for keeping prices low. but... and judith, you'll know this, some will say something that perhaps the critics will say that that isn't always fair and sustainable on your suppliers. i'm just wondering, do you have a duty to them as as well as to your customers? you know, i don't think in the world, our relationships with our suppliers have ever been so important as we seek to create value for the customers

we want to do that in partnership with suppliers. you know, we're intent on making long term investments, having strategic partnerships to help both people, both companies be able to operate effectively, efficiently, and still be able to produce great quality products which customers want. judith, let's look at india. i mean, one of the biggest markets in the world, you own a majority of flipkart, that's the biggest online retailer there. is the indian consumer spending as much as you'd hoped? yeah, india is an amazing market. in fact, i'm going there next week. it is 1.4 billion people, an average age of about 28. growing middle class and increasing digital adoption. i think what we're seeing both of our businesses there, we have two businesses. we have a flipkart business, which is a online marketplace business, and we have phonepay, which is the market leading payments business there. both have done incredibly well

since we made the original investments about five years ago. and what's interesting to me there and a bit of an insight onto the world is the way that that country is digitizing set country is digitizing, set out from some of the actions that the government took quite a while ago to say that they would become more digital as a country and digitise their citizens there as well. that had enabled this online mobile connectivity to be greater than probably anywhere else we've seen at the speed that it's been sort of kind of created. that means that for us, india is an incredibly important long term market as well. and it may be one of the only markets in the world which generation skips from modern retail as it moves from informal and online sits next to the informality of some of the markets, moms and pops stores that are there. let's talk about another

gigantic market, and that, of course, is china. i mean, you've got more than 400 stores there as well as online. but again, i'm wondering, due to the tensions and they're big, the big tensions between the united states and china, does that represent a threat to to your expansion in that country? we're very thoughtful about geopolitics, the way that impacts everything that we do. but as a company, we firmly believe that fair trade leads to better outcomes, international trade leads to better outcomes to international relations. so what we're doing in china is really focusing on our customers and our associates. and i was actually there a couple of weeks ago, and what's amazed me there is the pace of change that's happened. so one of the things that they are our leading market for penetration of e—commerce, so they almost at 50% of their sales are generated online, which is extraordinary really. and another indicator about the way these trends in the world are happening. walmart has pulled out of some

markets. is it about expanding more concentrating on those markets that are proving more lucrative? fisser concentrating on those markets that are proving more lucrative? over the last five years. _ are proving more lucrative? over the last five years, we've _ are proving more lucrative? over the last five years, we've undertaken - are proving more lucrative? over the last five years, we've undertaken a i last five years, we've undertaken a major reconstruction of our portfolio. to give you an idea of the scale of that, we were a $120 billion business and we've actually diverted of businesses with over $40 billion and that includes business in the uk which was our largest business. we've now created a portfolio which we're really happy with the mix of both because of the growth opportunities that it gives us, but equally it gives us access to places around the world. but all of them have great growth opportunities for the future. for us, we're going to double down on those markets and that's one of the reasons we made investments that we made, so we could focus our attention on people and dollar resources where it mattered to us

most. our strategy is really simple. its strong local businesses powered by walmart. that's the first part of the equation. the country has to be able to create growth and long term sustainable growth for that business but the second piece is where can we leverage walmart at its very best? how can we make businesses more competitive? that narrows the pall around the world about where we would want to be and our focus and our concentration is in the markets that we've got. that's not to say in the future we wouldn't think about how we use e—commerce to reach into other markets but for today and the foreseeable future, this portfolio is the right one for the international business. on that point, judith mckenna, the big boss of walmart international, a real pleasure having you on the show. thanks for your time and we'll talk to you soon. thanks, aaron. well, that's it for this week's show. i hope you enjoyed it. don't forget, you can keep up

with the latest on our global economy on the bbc website or the smartphone app. of course, you can also follow me on twitter or whatever they call it nowadays. x me. i'll x you back. you can get me at bbc aaron. thanks for watching. i'll see you soon. bye bye. hello, there. so far this july looks like it's going to be a little bit below average for our temperatures, but a long way above average for rainfall. yes, there are some places, for example, blackpool, that have already seen 2.7 times their averagejuly rainfall. so it's been a lot wetter than normal and that pattern really has been repeated across most of the uk. now the satellite picture from friday shows this curl of cloud out towards our north—west.

it's an area of low pressure and you can see the weather fronts spiraling into the centre of the low. now, over the next few hours, as that low continues to move closer to the north—west of the uk, so increasingly we'll see some heavy downpours working in, especially to northern ireland and western areas of scotland. these are kind of temperatures you'll have as you start off the weekend, 14 or 15 degrees. so it is going to be quite a mild start to things on saturday. however, we will see plenty of downpours around. and as i say, the closer you are to that area of low pressure, the more likely you are to see some fairly heavy and even some fairly prolonged outbreaks of rain. that's especially the case for northern ireland and west scotland, but to a degree, north—west england and north—west wales will probably have a lot of showers as well. elsewhere, well, probably not that many showers across the midlands and eastern areas of england. so some dry weather and lengthy dry spells for these areas showers few spells for these areas.

showers few and far between. temperatures still by and large, a little below average. now for the cricket's the ashes, i suspect it will probably stay mostly dry on saturday. if you catch a shower, it will be a fleeting light one. on sunday, rain on the way but late in the day. so again, it should be a largely unaffected day for play. different story, though for monday, we are going to see low pressures working and bringing more rain. sunday's forecast — then we have an area of low pressure that's going to be pushing rain into northern ireland. wales and western areas of england should stay mainly fine to the north and east, although there will be a few showers here. temperatures continue to run a little bit below average for the time of year. on into monday and tuesday's forecast. well, even as one area of low pressure crosses the uk, there's another one brewing and developing to our west. so it'd be nice to think as we finished the month and started a new month going into august, that we'd see a change in the weather pattern. but no, that's not the case. it stays unsettled with further showers or some lengthier spells of rain.

live from washington. this is bbc news. the nation of niger is in limbo as its democratically elected president has been overthrown in a military coup. nearly two—thirds of the us is now under heat advisories — including texas which has been gripped by excessive heat. and for the first time donald trump and ron desantis will share the same stage in the us state of iowa.

hello i'm carl nasman, thanks forjoining us. the nation of niger is grappling with the ramifications of a military coup. niger's democratically elected president mohamed bazoum was overthrown as part of the coup and detained. bazoum was first elected to office in april 2021 in niger's first peaceful democratic transfer of power. on friday, general abdourahamane tchiani, who also goes by omar tchiani appeared on state television, announcing himself as the country's new ruler. he was dressed in full military gear as he read a statement on behalf of niger's national council for the safeguarding of the homeland. he urged the population to remain calm. have a listen. translation: the action of the (nsf is motivated l

by the sole desire to preserve our beloved homeland