the global cost-of-living crisis? the price of food, energy reach record highs. developing nations are hurt the most. what is the fall out if inflation remains high? this is inside story. kim: welcome to the program. it is normal for the cost of goods and services to rise over

time. most economists think it is hoping to have inflation around 2%, but many countries are reporting many increases in the price of food, housing and fuel. in european countries years the euro, inflation rose to a record 8.1%. inflation in britain is at a 40 year high. to help families pay energy bills, the government has announced a billion-dollar package. the crisis is being blamed on shortages of workers and supply chain backlogs from the pandemic. also being blamed as russia's invasion of ukraine, which has increased prices for natural gas and staple such as cooking oil and wheat. >> it all caps on to everything. joe public is paying for it. we are all paying for it.

how much more can we pay for? >> i have had to get a second job. >> the main issue is the cost of living. as a middle income earner, i would say bringing up your children and at expenses you are facing and the cost of living is going up. kim: the impact is being felt hardest in the world's poorest communities. some families are spending four times what they were paying before russia's invasion of ukraine. the average cost of bright and pasta rose 50%, patroclus 53 percent more expensive. >> things are tough.

we are not seeing any improvement and things got worse when the price of fuel went up. >> what used to be five dollars is no $14. they should reduce the price of fuel. >> my entire paycheck is not enough to buy five bags of bribed. --bread. kim: let's bring in our guests. jeevun sandher, economist and political scientist at king's college in london. kalyani raghunathan, economist and research fellow at the international food policy research institute. stella nordhagen, senior technical specialist at the global alliance for improved nutrition. variable -- warm welcome to the program to all of you. what is driving this

cost-of-living crisis? jeevun: the supply chain disruptions in the wake of covid far more expensive to ship goods from country to country. russia's invasion of ukraine increase in energy and food prices even further. rich nations printing lots of cash and keeping interest rates too low. that was the right path through the pandemic but they left them too low for too long. kim: what impact is this rising cost of living now on people's nutrition, particularly in the developing world? kalyani: it is having a strong impacts on food security and nutrition.

the problem with india as we have lack of data on what is happening nationwide. a lot of data has shown the food insecurity is very poor. we administered a set of eight questions and more than 80% of respondents reported experiencing at least a mild form of food insecurity. that includes getting food onto the plates and also what is getting on those plates. they are seeing data when it comes to people eating fruits and vegetables that things are getting more expensive and they are part of to transport.

-- harder to transport. kim: when was this research done? was it before the pandemic or the research -- invasion of ukraine? have things gotten worse? kalyani: things are getting worse. the prices of food prices are rising. the rising price of edible oils. the surveys predate all of this. these are the impacts of covid and unemployment and the inflation crisis. data was collected in december of last year and january of this year.

it also was before the war. already the situation was extremely poor. kim: we just talked about a couple of factors going on here. contributing to the cost of living going up. covid and supply chain issues. the war in ukraine. and inflation. given those factors what is the state of global food systems right now? stella: good question. it is challenging. i think it is important to realize that even before the pandemic, before the war in ukraine, before the current shops to the economic system, we were not in a position of strength when it comes to food systems, particularly from a nutritious aspect. you when it that 3 billion

people worldwide were unable to afford a healthy diet. over a third of the world's population is afflicted by some form of malnutrition, whether that is not getting enough calories, getting the micronutrients that are important for development, or whether it is getting guessing much and being affected by obesity. the world's food systems were not really delivering nutrition even before covid. covid added on to that by affecting the supply chains and affecting the likelihood that people are able to access nutritious food. as my colleagues have mentioned, we are adding on to that with another layer of disruptions and another layer of food crisis that are affected many different types of foods, staple foods.

but also edible oils which are an important component of diets as well. this is pinching people when they are ready did not have a lot of flexibility within their budgets to ensure that they were eating nutritious diets. kim: from an economic perspective, once this cost-of-living crisis predictable even without the war in ukraine? as we went through the pandemic and government started spending come up with the situation for siebel? jeevun: it was somewhat foreseeable. every time we were getting a new set of inflation figures they were higher than expected. it was in essence foreseeable. central banks were a little bit slow to realize we are starting

to become embedded. as soon as russia invaded ukraine, we saw prices increase further. the question is how do we deal with this going forward? we have half a billion more facing hunger and political upheaval as well. prime minister has been overthrown in prime minister -- should and pakistan. kim: how equipped are lower income countries to deal with this crisis? jeevun: not very well equipped. they were already going through difficulties with covid itself.

we are now seeing middle-income nations are in distress, they are struggling. the state of the global crisis needs a global response. for some countries they are able to feed their population and make sure everyone gets enough money in their pocket, but some countries cannot afford that. we need to see rich patients stepped up and provide more humanitarian aid. kim: what are the gender imbalances when you look at the impact of this crisis? how women and non-binary people are impacted? kalyani: that is a good question. it is a good one in the context of diets and food insecurity. women often eat less and eat least.

if there was a food crisis and there was a limited amount of nutritious food, then typically the women get the smallest portion of that. there has been some evidence that it is the women and minority populations that get hit first. there are other layer's as well. a lot of women are either withdrawn from the workforce or moving to precarious employment. in the context of these repeated shocks, households may have an ability to buffer, but when it is one thing after another, coping strategies are drunk on our assets -- drunk down on assets. more broadly, women are often

the ones hit the worst by a crisis of this kind and particularly in the context of nutritious diets, they often get the short end of the stick. kim: chemical fertilizers require a lurch of mount -- large amount of fossil fuels. that is going to impact the amount of crops. does that mean this crisis will be prolonged? stella: it is certainly another factor that is set into the disruption. chemical fertilizers are one other area where there are constraints within the supply chain in terms of access to raw materials. much of a key nutrient in fertilizer is developed in belarus. that repulsed through the entire

food because fertilizer is used for so many different crops in so many different places and many countries are dependent on global markets for accessing that fertilizer. if you look at africa, multiple countries are dependent on imports primarily from europe for over 50% of the fertilizers. so these can have large effects. it does at this one other factor in that the level of inputs that needs to be worked out before all the other stages of the food system can adapt to that disruption. if there is a problem at inputs, that means there will be a production -- problem production and retail. it can have lasting effects that

can take more time to sort out than any single disruption to sate food prices might. kim: what role has china played in the supply chain issues because it has continued to have this zero covid approach policy, continued lockdowns. what impact is china having globally? jeevun: huge impact. the lockdowns were stepping goods back and forth. we cannot get goods, in big u.k., continuous be shipped are 10 times more expensive as they were before the pandemic. it is also going to continue to have an impact.

china is a large player in the global economic sphere. it is going to hit everybody else's growth as well. one nation that is not spending and producing as much means less as well on the global economy as a whole. kim: what is your take on india's response to the covid-19 pandemic and how that has impacted the cost-of-living crisis that the country is facing now? and also, your take on how the government is trying to address it? kalyani: at the start of the crisis, there was confusion and there was a lot of evidence that there were severe disruptions.

there were incomplete instructions about the transport of food across state lines and that led to a lot of disruptions in those supply chains. that led to the ability like -- for groups like fruits and vegetables to get from farm to table. that cost a lot of impact on prices. -- that caused them a lot of impact on prices. what i think is crucial to note

is that social safety nets were very important. in the first year of the pandemic the government really did invest not only in the public distribution system, but also in supplementing improvements. that was a really good endeavor. having that program in place was very helpful.

one of the points you made earlier about lower income countries, because we have in place like the public distribution system, ways of making transfers in cash, in a sense we do have the machinery in place that should be able to be put into use. i am not sure that we have done enough. they are continued to do this even as the covid crisis recedes. kim: what is the impact of climate change and extreme weather events on crops and food? stella: it is one more stress and it is a stress we have seen over the years but it is increasing in frequency. looking at the projections from scientists, it is a trend that

will continue. climate change will increase not only the average temperatures and change rainfall patterns which will have effects on what crops can grow where, what types of fertilizer and irrigation and customize -- pesticides are needed. it also changes the extremity and severity of events. we will see an increase in things like droughts and floods and when they happen they will be worse. this is something we have already seen occurring in recent years. the shops are much harder because they are more difficult to adapt to and they can wipe out an entire crop cycle.

we see the effects of climate for example in the horn of africa where there was some major drought and it is exacerbating the food security situation within those countries. climate change will only exacerbate these challenges in the future and gives us one more challenge that we need to address alongside the lingering effects of the pandemic and the widespread effects of the war. kim: are we headed into a recession? what indicators you look at to predict that? jeevun: yes, we are getting close to that point. at this point in time, we are looking at the ways in which high prices and lower demand in the future can impact. we have surveys about how people feel about consumer confidence. those indicators are starting to

point towards more negative growth and a huge downgrade in global growth forecast. when it costs more money to produce things, it also means you become less productive and less money to buy things. kim: they're was a lot of talk in developed economies about a labor shortage, that businesses cannot find workers because workers have more power now. if that the case also in developing economies though? jeevun: even if we are looking at a better employment outcome, we tend to be able to lock down more. another problem of those developing nations is the way in

which employment is controlled by global currency movements. it is a different set of challenges that developing nations are facing and certainly a different situation for labor markets as well. kim: what is the impact of sustained food insecurity, not just on physical health, but societally? stella: there is a lot of impacts. one area of impact we are the most worried about is when food security is experienced by pregnant women and young children early in their lives. we refer the -- 2000 days window. it is the period of time between consumption and when a child reaches their second birthday. if you do not get enough to eat and the right things to eat,

that can lead to delays in development that persist throughout the lifetime. not that she didn't educational outcomes -- not achieving educational outcomes. these are things that persist during the entire lifetime. we are worried about the most vulnerable groups, pregnant women and young children. but sustained food insecurity at any point in life is a major difficulty to deal with. when schoolchildren do not get enough to eat they do not concentrate in school. workers do not get enough to eat they are not as productive. more importantly, not getting enough to eat and having to worry about where your next meal is coming from degrades the quality of life for everybody

who is affected by it. the longer it persists, it translates to a large loss in terms of human experience. kim: thank you very much to all of our guests. and thank you jesse for watching. you can see the program any time by visiting our website. you can join the conversation on twitter. goodbye for now.

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