-- Whether it’s bread or onions, food has the power to make or break a country’s leadership. How nations secure their staples is looming large in elections across the world with war in Ukraine and now the Middle East.Starting with New Zealand and Poland this weekend, at least a quarter of the global population will head to the polls over the next eight months or so. Those countries will be followed by Argentina, the Netherlands and Egypt, and then Indonesia and India in 2024.
Politicians have reasons to be nervous. Food price spikes can trigger food riots around the world. In 2011, they contributed to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, a region in turmoil again. Meanwhile, central bankers and governments everywhere are struggling to contain food costs that are outpacing core inflation.
In the Netherlands, the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural produce, farmers have turned into a political force before elections in November. A goal to halve nitrogen emissions by 2030 led to protests, and the upstart Farmer-Citizen Movement, or BBB, is now the largest party in the Dutch upper house and fourth in opinion polls. The governing coalition retracted their emissions goal.
Libertarian candidate Javier Milei, the shock front-runner, plans to unleash an export boom and dismantle policies that have held back agricultural investment. Milei would scrap export taxes and quotas and remove direct meddling in food prices. That’s in addition to his controversial policy of switching Argentina’s currency from the peso to the US dollar.
Retail inflation returned to within the central bank’s target level in September thanks to an easing of food costs, but the prices of staples like grains, pulses and spices are still high compared with a year earlier. --With assistance from Agnieszka Barteczko, Cagan Koc, Anuradha Raghu, Pratik Parija, Tracy Withers, Michael Ovaska, Jody Megson, Michael Gunn, Mirette Magdy, Jonathan Gilbert, Patrick Gillespie and Megan Durisin.It took Trump calling Hezbollah 'very smart' for Ron DeSantis to finally glove up and go after him
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