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Soaring Food Prices Prompt Eurasian Nations To Ban Food Exports | OilPrice.com oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-… #oilprice Food has always been a weapon of war. See below @OilandEnergy 1/

2/ The harshest winter since 2008 is contributing to shortages of staple vegetables across Central Asia and sending prices north in a region still suffering from COVID-induced food inflation.

3/ In Uzbekistan, record frosts have highlighted the shortcomings of the national energy system as even residents of the capital spent days on end without power. But the cold has also hammered the agriculture sector in the region’s most populous country.

4/ On January 20, the Uzbek agriculture minister announced a four-month ban on exports of onions after prices doubled in three weeks.

The title of the ministry’s press release – “there are reserves of onions in Uzbekistan” – hints at panic.

5/ In comments to private news website Gazeta.uz, one resident of Bukhara region gave an account of this perfect storm: "Due to the closure of gas stations, there are problems with public transport.

6/ On Tuesday we went to the market and did not see a single bus. The only thing left is taxis. Food prices have gone up. They say that goods are not being brought from Tashkent. There are no sellers at the Kholkhozni bazaar because vegetables and fruits have frozen."

7/ Potatoes have also jumped in price since the start of the year – by 14 percent, reported specialist agriculture news site East Fruit last week.

8/ Price shifts elsewhere in Central Asia have been less severe, but experts say the true impact of the deep freeze will become apparent in the coming weeks and months.

9/ A consultant for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Tajikistan, Bakhtiyor Abduvokhidov, told East Fruit that carrots could become scarce soon, noting that Tajik farmers tended to store harvested carrots in the ground due to a lack of warmer storage space.

10/ Kazakhstan last week followed Uzbekistan’s lead in banning exports of root vegetables.

The Ministry of Trade and Integration on January 22 said that prices for Kazakh onions had risen more than 5 percent in the space of a week.

11/ Minister Serik Zhumangarin told journalists two days later that there are around 150,000 tons of onions in the country – enough for around five months, but less than authorities had previously thought.

12/ The reason for onions disappearing, Zhumangarin argued, was surging demand in Uzbekistan and Russia, as well as Pakistan, a major producer that suffered floods last summer and now has a deficit of the vegetable.

13/ (In the months before the cold snap, East Fruit reported that Uzbekistan was ramping up onion exports to the South Asian nation.)

14/ Kazakhstan posted Central Asia's highest figure for food inflation last year, at over 25 percent, partly powered by fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

15/ After deadly unrest last January, authorities are especially anxious about this trend. In one measure to avert price spikes, the trade ministry said it had ordered Kazakhstan’s regions to buy from producers in the agriculture-rich southern Turkestan region.

16/ But there, too, the frosts have wreaked havoc, with Turkestan’s greenhouses – more than two thirds of Kazakhstan’s total – witnessing large scale harvest failures.

17/ According to a report by independent news outlet Asia-Plus, Tajik onion prices have tripled year-on-year to reach around 73 cents per kilogram, measured against the official exchange rate.

18/ An agriculture expert quoted by the website said that the most recent onion harvest in Tajikistan had been successful, with only “minor losses.”