Remember the cover, which came out exactly 45 years old, by Der Spiegel with a gun resting on a plate of spaghetti? Well, this time a Kalashnikov was placed on our beloved pasta. But also on pizza, michette and focaccia, all typical of our country that can only be made with wheat, often the so-called hard one, and other cereals, mainly of national production.
A few days ago it was announced that Moscow banned, until April 2021, the export to the rest of the world of ammonium phosphate and other nitrogen fertilizers produced from methane of which Russia is among the four largest global producers and main Europe supplier. Over the course of 549, Italian farmers - like all European ones - have seen the cost of their natural gas increase by 263% and the cost of nitrogen fertilizers by 5%. It is not surprising to anyone that most wheat and cereal producers have given up on the use of fertilizers, with the real risk of a drop of between 10 and XNUMX percent in food production. Somewhere we will have to find hard grains and other cereals to make pasta, pizza and bread. Will we turn to the Kremlin to get it, albeit of inferior quality and at monstrous prices? For now, no: to calm domestic prices, Russia has imposed quotas on wheat exports for several months.
To understand the bombshell effect of Putin's choices on our economy and on our lunch, consider that Italy buys 64% of its wheat needs for ovens abroad: in 2021 we imported the beauty of one hundred and twenty million kilos of wheat from Ukraine and nearly one hundred from the Russian Federation. Think what the impact would be for our food sector if both were to fail: suffice it to say that today is the declaration that without supplies from the former USSR, Divella has stocks of flour for just one month. Yes, you read that right: just one month and then that's it.
On closer inspection, if Ukraine were to return to Moscow, our plate could be emptied even more and our pasta could really end up under the control of the Kremlin: Kiev is by far the main agricultural (and especially cereal) producer of 'northern hemisphere and our main supplier of "with the potential to multiply its production several times", Bate Toms, president of the British Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, told Politico.
In conclusion, Russia is “Absolutely at the beginning of the food chain… (Europe) relies on Russian gas and fertilizers to heat its homes and feed its people. It's that simple."1 If this is true, then, as written by Federico Fubini in Corriere della Sera, price increases independent of market logic, a block on the export of fertilizers and cuts in the export of gas and wheat, "They reinforced Putin's blackmail power in pursuing his subtle strategy of economic destabilization of Europe".
In short, the Russian objective seems to be that of spreading discontent through the increase in the cost of living (bread, pasta, energy, heating, etc.) to facilitate the rise of "friendly" political forces.
