Empty shelves in Wigan supermarkets as Ukraine shortages hit

Tesco Extra in Wigan has put up notices to customers apologising about the shortages.

Supermarkets across the UK have placed limits on how much cooking oil customers can buy due to supply-chain problems caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Tesco is allowing three items per customer.

Most of the UK’s sunflower oil comes from the war-torn nation, with the restrictions applying to that product as well as olive and rapeseed oils at some supermarkets.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said its Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for a basket of commodities, averaged 159.3 points last month, up 12.6 per cent from February.

The February figure was already the highest level since the index’s inception in 1990.

FAO said the war in Ukraine was largely responsible for the 17.1 per cent rise in the price of grains, including wheat and others like oats, barley and corn.

Together, Russia and Ukraine account for around 30 per cent and 20 per cent of global wheat and corn exports respectively.

The biggest price increases were for vegetable oils: that price index rose 23.2 per cent, driven by higher quotations for sunflower seed oil used in cooking. Ukraine is the world’s leading exporter of sunflower oil, and Russia is number two.

While predictable given February’s steep rise, Josef Schmidhuber, deputy director of FAO’s markets and trade division said: “This is really remarkable”, said

“Clearly, these very high prices for food require urgent action.”

Soaring food prices and disruption to supplies from Russia and Ukraine have threatened food shortages in countries in the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia where many people were already not getting enough to eat.

Those nations rely on affordable supplies of wheat and other grains from the Black Sea region to feed millions of people, who now face the possibility of further political instability.

Other large grain producers like the US, Canada, France, Australia and Argentina are being closely watched to see if they can quickly ramp up production, but farmers face issues like climbing fuel and fertiliser costs exacerbated by the war, drought and supply chain disruptions.