Global Supply Chain Challenges and Food Chain Dependencies

Fertilisers and edible oils are two specific commodities which are being affected by global supply disruptions.

The price of mineral nitrogen (N) fertilisers has risen by an unprecedented amount over the past year, due to supply chain issues including the price of natural gas and influenced by the conflict in Ukraine.

Global fertiliser supply is very likely to remain unpredictable for the foreseeable future, impacting the UK domestic production including the availability and quality of raw materials for food processing and manufacture.

A decrease in the use of Nitrogen fertilisers also entail a significant impact on crop quality.

For example, fertiliser use is related to the protein content of grains (e.g. gluten), which offer many important functional characteristics of bread and some types of pastry production; and are required to meet milling specifications for flour and optimum quality and functionality in baking.

The war in Ukraine is also causing significant disruption to the global vegetable oil market, requiring substitution of sunflower oil with other oils to meet consumer demand e.g. for processed foods.

Edible oils (e.g. sunflower, rapeseed, olive oil, soya bean and palm oil) are crucial in food production, manufacture and processing with a wide range of functions impacting on the behaviour and property of food during processing, storage and shelf life, as well as on nutritional and sensory properties.

To review the impacts of current global supply chain challenges on the food systems focussing on two specific areas.

This work will: - assess the potential impacts (across the supply chain) of (i) a reduction in the use of nitrogen fertilisers (N) on UK crops and (ii) edible oil substitutions; and in parallel - assess the short-term risk of disruption (immediate to 6-months) to the supply of critical food chain dependencies (CDs) arising from current global challenges.