Wednesday, December 15, 2021
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and within weeks the war reached kitchens far from the fighting through wheat, fertilizer and fuel prices.
On this day in 2022, Russian forces crossed into Ukraine along several fronts, beginning the largest land war in Europe since 1945. Millions of Ukrainians left their homes in the first month. Whatever a household thought about the politics, the economic effects moved outward on their own schedule and did not ask.
Ukraine and Russia together supplied a large share of the world's exported wheat, corn and sunflower oil, and Russia was a major source of natural gas and fertilizer. Grain shipments out of the Black Sea stopped, fertilizer prices climbed, and fuel followed. Countries that imported most of their bread wheat felt it hardest, but grocery bills rose across North America and Europe too, and the pressure lasted well past the first headlines.
The pattern is the durable takeaway. A conflict does not need to reach your continent to reach your pantry, because the same few chokepoints move food and energy for everyone. That is the mechanism behind the way war abroad empties plates at home, and it is the same reason a narrow waterway like the Strait of Hormuz can move prices in an American town.
