let's go take a look at what's on the show. fires, floods and war — events which are threatening lives around the world, but also threatening the return of higher global food 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. there 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 international joins me to talk prices, retail and etail 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. translation: 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 let people come out here and pick. but as you can see, there's not a single peach anywhere on the tree. in spain, on the island of la palma, farmers, they're surveying the damage. translation: everything was surrounded by fire. i translation: maybe a third | of the vineyard has been lost. and even in iraq, harvests are under threat. translation: 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, 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, kona haque.

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 any more. no, that's correct. we've had a series of events over the last few weeks which have caused prices to suddenly escalate again. prices 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 raise interest rates. what's the impact of today's picture? what impact is that 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 slowdown, 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 mayjust 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 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 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 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, kona haque, always great to see you. thanks for your time and we'll talk to you soon. thank you so much. 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 nixon, 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 of that? great to talk to you. 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 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,

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, i think, done a lot of innovation on shipping to to stretch those economies of scale to the bigger and bigger ships, to get more and more tonnes or containers onto ships with using less and less fuel. but we're pretty much running out of runway on the liner economics of doing that. and we will now have to go to these new greener fuels, which will also be 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 1,000 kilometres away. that is going to have a big impact 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 de—vanned 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 2023 due to an inventory overhang, so the sales to inventory 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 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. all the best. hey, coming up, one of the most powerful bosses in the world of retail talks to me about price pressure keeping costs down and retail versus retail. yep. the big boss of walmart internationaljoins me after the break. we're talking walmart. 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. 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 weather, 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, 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 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. the other piece that's really interesting, and it somehow doesn't really fit with this flight to value, is that people still want to know exactly where their products came from, trust in those products is really critical for them. so we are conscious still about thinking about where we source and how we source for people. and then finally, a trend that is true everywhere is that when there is a seasonal event, so i think about christmas or easter or any kind of festival or holiday, people still want to treat themselves. and i think some of that may well still be a hangover from the pandemic where everybody was unable to do those things.

judith, i'mjust 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 operate in. i think that we're still very confident about being able to get there. and as we know, walmart, it's very well known for keeping prices low. and judith, you'll know this, some will say something that perhaps the critics will say 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. we want to do that in partnership with suppliers. 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 digitising. 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 has 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 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, they are our leading market for penetration of e—commerce, so they, almost 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 the future about expanding

more or concentrating on those markets that are proving more lucrative? over the last five years, we've undertaken a major restructure of our portfolio. to give you an idea of the scale of that, we were about a $120 billion business before we started with the restructuring, and we've actually divested of businesses with over $40 billion and that included our asda 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 because it diversifies risk. we're in some really different 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 the devestments 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 a two—part equation. 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 to help those businesses be more competetive? that narrows the pool around the world about where we would want to be, so 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. for the third weekend in a row low pressure is in charge of our weather. it has already brought us some rain during saturday. much of that rain came in the form of some sharp showers, some sunny spells in between. for sunday, we will see more general rain spreading

from the southwest as we go through the day. on the earlier satellite picture, you can see this swirl of cloud. that's the area of low pressure that brought the showers on saturday. and then behind me, this shield of cloud rolling in from the atlantic, already bringing some rain into the southwest of england through the first part of sunday morning, further north and east, sunny spells, scattered heavy showers. and then through the day, our band of rain pushes northwards and eastwards getting into parts of northern ireland, wales, the midlands down into the south east of england by sunday afternoon. and with that quite a strong wind at times as well. it will also turn really quite misty and murky for some coasts and hills in the west. temperature wise, well, i think the highest values will be in eastern england up to around 23 degrees. so for the cricket at the oval, i think there is the increasing chance of rain as we go through the day. some disruption to play, certainly through the latter part of the afternoon is quite likely. and then as we head through sunday evening, well, our band of rain continues

to make some further progress northwards and eastwards, certainly getting up into southern and some central parts of scotland. a lot of cloud further south and west, a bit misty and murky in places and very, very warm and quite muggy in the south, 16 or 17 degrees. so we head on into monday. ourfirst band of rain pushes a little bit further northwards across scotland, could well see some further very wet weather moving across the channel islands and fringing into some southern counties of england and elsewhere quite a lot of cloud, some showers at times and temperatures between 17 and 22 degrees. now, as we head deeper into the week, this area of low pressure is going to push away eastwards. it may be that another one pushes in from the west around the middle part of the week. the general pattern, though, through the week ahead is for us to be bringing ourair in from the north. so that is going to make it feel really rather cool at times. temperatures, as we move into the start of august, generally below the average for the time of year. there will continue to be some heavy showers around at times, some drier interludes.

live from washington, this is bbc news. the eu suspends all security cooperation with niger after the army took power in a coup. thousands protest on the streets of israel in protest to the judicial overhaul. and we take you to liverpool which is hosting pride on behalf of

ukraine. i'm helena humphrey, great to have you with us. the eu has suspended all security cooperation with niger after the country's army to our in a coup and has refused to recognise the new leaders. it comes shortly after the us declared its unflagging support for the ousted president seen as a key western ally in the fight against islamist militants. on friday, the general declared himself the new leader and he said insecurity, economic woes and corruption led him to seize power but there are now concerns in the west about which countries the new leader will align with. burkina faso and mali have both pivoted towards russia since their own coups.

there has been a lot