Food prices around the world, in­clud­ing in the Caribbean, sky­rock­et­ed this year af­ter the con­flict in Ukraine broke out, ac­cord­ing to Lil­ia Bu­run­ci­uc, World Bank Coun­try Di­rec­tor for the Caribbean.

In a state­ment, she out­lined that the World Bank’s do­mes­tic food price in­fla­tion dash­board showed that at least four Caribbean coun­tries—Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Guyana, Haiti, and Suri­name—have ex­pe­ri­enced food price in­creas­es high­er than five per cent every month be­tween March 2021 to 2022.

Suri­name wit­nessed food price in­creas­es of over 30 per­cent in this pe­ri­od and ranks among the worst af­fect­ed coun­tries glob­al­ly based on this in­di­ca­tor.

Not­ing that both Ukraine and Rus­sia pro­duce a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the world’s grains, oilseeds and fer­til­iz­er, Bu­run­ci­uc said the ex­pect­ed short­fall in sup­plies has al­ready caused price hikes for these food com­modi­ties.

She said the Caribbean al­so re­lies heav­i­ly on food im­ports for do­mes­tic con­sump­tion and to sup­ply the tourism in­dus­try, adding that as these price in­creas­es trans­mit to lo­cal mar­kets, those pre­vi­ous­ly bare­ly able to af­ford a nu­tri­tious di­et may not have enough mon­ey to do so any more.

“Food crises are bad for every­one, but even more so for the poor­est. The first thing fam­i­lies with low in­come do dur­ing the food cri­sis is switch to cheap­er food that fills the stom­ach but is usu­al­ly less nu­tri­tious,” Bu­run­ci­uc said.

She added that when nu­tri­tion­al needs are not met, peo­ple have low­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­ad­e­quate nu­tri­tion has ir­re­versible ef­fects on a child’s phys­i­cal and men­tal de­vel­op­ment.

“Thus, the cri­sis we are wit­ness­ing to­day may af­fect not on­ly the in­di­vid­ual but al­so the longer-term growth prospects of coun­tries with­in the re­gion,” Bu­run­ci­uc said.