Seth Carpenter: Spiking Food Prices and the Global Economy

Under the combined stresses of dry weather, COVID, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, agricultural prices are spiking, and many countries are scrambling to combat the consequences to the global economy. Morgan Stanley Chief Global Economist Seth Carpenter explains.

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Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley's Chief Global Economist. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, today I'll be talking about the surge in agricultural prices and some of the implications for the global economy. It's Wednesday, June 8th, at 1:30 p.m. in New York. 

Agricultural prices have jumped this year, and that surge has become one of the key topics of the moment, both on a domestic level and a global scale. The Russian invasion of Ukraine clearly contributed significantly to the runup in prices, but even before the war, dry weather and COVID-19 had already started to threaten the global food supply. Rising food prices pose many risks, particularly for lower income people and lower income countries. Even though I'm going to be talking mostly about cold economics today, the human toll of all of this is absolutely critical to keep in mind. In fact, we see the surge in food prices as a risk to the global economic recovery. When prices for necessities like food go up, lower income households just have to spend more on food. And that increased spending on food means they've got less money to spend on discretionary items. 

To put some numbers on how we got here, global food prices have surged about 66% since the start of COVID-19, and about 12% since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Dry weather had already affected crops, especially in Latin America and India. And remember, fertilizer is tightly linked to the petrochemical industry, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has complicated that situation, leaving fertilizer prices at all time highs. 

So what's been the response? Governments across developed markets and emerging markets have started enacting measures to try to contain their domestic prices. In the developed market world, these measures include attempts to boost domestic production so as to relieve some of the pressures. While in EM, some governments have opted to cut food taxes or put in place price controls. In addition, some governments have also imposed bans on exports of certain agricultural products. The side effect, though, is getting more trade disruptions in already tight commodity markets. 

Against this backdrop, there are two key consequences. First, consumption spending is likely to be lower than it would have been. And second, inflation is likely to rise because of the rise in food prices. And if we look at it across the globe, emerging markets really look more vulnerable to these shocks than developed markets. 

First, in terms of consumption spending, our estimates suggest that the recent rise in food prices might decrease real consumption spending throughout this year by about 1% in the U.S. and about 3% in Mexico, all else equal. Now, that said, not every component of spending gets affected uniformly. Historical data analysis suggests that the drop is heavily focused in durable goods spending, like for motor vehicles. And EMs are more exposed because they've got a higher share of food consumption in their overall consumption basket. 

Now, when it comes to inflation, we think that the recent spike in food prices, if it lasts for the rest of this year, it's probably going to add about 1.2 percentage points to headline Consumer Price Index inflation in emerging markets, and about 6/10 of a percentage point increase to inflation in DM. These are really big increases. Now why should the inflationary push be higher in emerging markets? First, just arithmetically, food represents a larger share of CPI in emerging markets than it does in DM, something like 24% versus 17%. And second, in emerging markets, inflation expectations tend to be less well anchored, and so a rise in prices in a critical component like food tends to spread out to lots of other components in inflation as well. 

So what's the bottom line here? Growth is slowing globally. Inflation is high. The surge in food prices is going to increase the risks for both of those. 

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