Despite unfortunate events, global agribusiness remains resilient—which is good, because all the world needs food.

A perfect storm hit the global agricultural market this year—or, in some places, a perfect drought. The war in Ukraine; global post-pandemic supply-side disruptions; record droughts in Europe and China; frosts in Brazil; Hurricane Ian in Florida; and unusually heavy rains and floods in India, Pakistan and Australia combined in 2022 to test the limits of the current production and retail chain of food supplies.

“Several issues affected supply, but three years of La Niña and the war in Ukraine are the two major factors there,” says Carlos Mera Arzeno, head of Agri Commodities Markets Research at Rabobank.

The current challenges add to the strain on an already strained market. In 2012, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimated that by 2050 we will need to increase food output by 60% based on a business-as-usual scenario. “The global food market faces the challenge of feeding a growing population, which should reach 10 billion people by 2050. It is not a trivial task,” explains Christiane Assis, director of investor relations at food processing company JBS.

The FAO’s benchmark Food Price Index shows that food prices rose from July 2020 to February of this year at the fastest pace in a decade due to increasingly tighter stocks, especially in the wheat and corn markets.

But as Latin America’s cropland expansion appears to be the market’s main bet in the short term, the broader challenges for the industry will require much more profound changes in the global food production chain.

“In the short term, the food industry is expected to weather any recession relatively well. However, looking further ahead, the main challenge will be to contribute to the race to net-zero carbon emissions, where changes at the farm level can sequestrate carbon and have a positive impact,” says Arzeno. “Food has been part of the problem for a long time; but in many cases, it can become part of the solution,” he concludes.