While grain silos in many Western countries may overflow this winter, tens of millions of people risk going without food as hunger is being used more than ever as a weapon of war.
More than 50mn people living in 17 conflict-ridden countries are in “severe food insecurity”, two UN agencies warned recently.
The protracted conflicts in Syria and Yemen place those two nations at the top of the list established by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP).
In Yemen, 14mn people – over half the population – are now considered to be facing a food crisis or emergency. Meanwhile in Syria, 8.7mn people or 37% of the pre-conflict population, “need urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance”,  according to the two agencies.
The same goes for parts of northeastern Nigeria, which has borne the brunt of an insurgency by Boko Haram militants since 2009, and where the aid group Doctors Without Borders estimates half a million people face a humanitarian catastrophe.
Meanwhile, most of the world’s top wheat producers are enjoying bumper crops, pushing prices down on global commodity markets.
But for countries gripped by conflict, importing food is logistically difficult if not impossible and at prices out of the reach of most of the population which have lost their livelihoods.
Maintaining local agricultural production, even traditional small-scale farms, thus often becomes critically important for reducing hunger while helping keep down the number of refugees, according to the head of the FAO’s emergency unit, Dominique Burgeon.
“It is clear that agriculture plays an important role in the resilience of populations faced with the shock of war,” he told AFP in an interview recently.
 The FAO estimates that only 1.9mn tonnes of wheat will be harvested this year in Syria, less than half of the 4mn tonnes it produced before the war.
 Nevertheless, it has had difficulties in persuading donor nations to reach into their pockets to fund purchases of seeds, fertilisers and tools for Syrian farmers.
 In June, Pope Francis rightly condemned the fact it is often more difficult to deliver humanitarian aid than to obtain weapons.
Also, the farm aid needs to be adapted to weather conditions in target countries.
 Burgeon warned that despite the best of intentions certain non-governmental organisations risked doing harm by importing seeds not appropriate for the local climate, which would “set the country back years”.
Farmers in Syria are already finding it impossible to obtain seeds developed by local agronomists due to the war, which has forced the closure of the nation’s seed bank. Syria may end up becoming the first nation to make a withdrawal at the world’s seed bank buried in a mountain off the Svalbard islands in the Arctic Ocean if local strains are to be re-introduced.

More than 50mn people living in 17 conflict-ridden countries are in severe food insecurity