ROME (AP) — Conflicts and disruptions to global energy markets could push millions more people into hunger by driving up fuel, fertilizer and food costs, the head of the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development warned, as a new United Nations report showed global progress against hunger remains fragile.
The U.N. food security report, released Tuesday, found global hunger has eased modestly in recent years, but projected more than 500 million people could still face chronic hunger by 2030. Africa is expected to bear the largest share of that burden.
In an interview with The Associated Press on July 10, IFAD President Alvaro Lario said geopolitical tensions and potential disruptions to shipping and energy supplies, including uncertainty surrounding the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran war, could leave an additional 9-18 million people facing hunger if the shocks persist.
“We are in a current era where we have the highest number of conflicts and are still increasing,” Lario said. “Whenever there is a conflict, also hunger, displacement, refugees increase.”
Conflict remains one of the biggest obstacles to reducing hunger worldwide, Lario added.
Wars and geopolitical tensions can disrupt shipping, energy supplies and agricultural inputs, increasing costs across food systems already strained by inflation. Lario stressed that hunger and conflict often reinforce one another, creating a cycle that is difficult to break without greater stability.
Higher energy prices are already affecting fertilizers and agricultural production, he said. The impact is especially significant for small-scale farmers, many of whom rely on diesel fuel to pump water, harvest crops and transport goods to market.
Rising fuel costs increase production expenses and can feed directly into higher food prices.
The new report identifies affordability as one of the world’s biggest food security challenges. While food production continues to grow, roughly a third of the global population still can't afford a healthy diet. In low-income countries, that figure rises to about 77%, according to Lario.
“The biggest challenge is no longer simply producing enough food, but making healthy diets affordable,” he said.
Climate change is adding further pressure to food systems and rural livelihoods.
Lario noted that floods, prolonged droughts and extreme heat are increasingly disrupting agriculture around the world and have become a common reality for many communities.
Governments should focus on resilience and adaptation before disasters strike, rather than relying solely on emergency responses afterward, he said.
“This is just becoming the new normal,” Lario said. “We are seeing floods in many countries. We’re still seeing droughts that have been expanding for four or five years.”
The fund is increasing investments in climate-adaptation programs aimed at helping rural communities withstand floods, droughts and extreme heat, he said, arguing that support is urgently needed for the millions of small farmers who produce much of the world’s food.
The report highlights Africa as the world’s most pressing food-security challenge. For the first time, the continent has overtaken Asia as the region with the largest number of hungry people, and nearly 60% of the world’s chronically undernourished people could live there by 2030.
Lario attributed the shift partly to rapid population growth and slower economic gains than in parts of Asia, and he called for greater investment in agriculture, infrastructure and food systems.
African countries currently import nearly $100 billion worth of food each year, he said, underscoring the need for stronger local production, storage, distribution and regional trade networks.
Conflicts, energy-market disruptions and climate extremes threaten to derail progress unless governments invest in more resilient food systems, Lario said.
FILE - Alvaro Lario, president of the International Fund of Agricultural Development, participates in the Global Citizen NOW conference in New York, April 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
FILE - Martha Waema, stands on her farm after it was submerged by weeks of rainfall in Machakos, Kenya, May 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku, File)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — One is a tech-savvy drone innovator with no military experience who became Ukraine’s youngest defense minister six months ago and was credited with contributing to successes in defending against Russia's 4-year-old invasion.
The other is a seasoned, Soviet-trained general more at home with traditional top-down command culture who led Ukraine’s armed forces.
When their personalities and policies clashed, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decided one of them had to go as part of a wider government reshuffle. He dismissed the popular young upstart, sparking protests across the country.
A look at the contrasting careers of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.
The 35-year-old Fedorov was credited with modernizing Ukraine’s drone program and changed military procurement rules in a crackdown on corruption. He argued that the military establishment was resisting changes demanded by the evolving war with Russia.
The former tech entrepreneur drove forward Ukraine’s innovative drone technology that has recently reshaped the battlefield and has earned the interest of other countries, including the United States, as well as those in Europe and the Middle East.
“We transformed Ukraine into a global tech leader and a defense powerhouse,” he said on social media after he lost his job last week in Zelenskyy's government shake-up.
Fedorov also took credit for restricting Russian military access to Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet services.
Before becoming defense minister in January, Fedorov headed Ukraine’s digital transformation policies and introduced successful e-government platforms.
Fedorov got that job after running the digital operations of Zelenskyy’s presidential election campaign in 2019. Before that, he ran a digital marketing company.
After his dismissal, Fedorov publicly accused Syrskyi of blocking military reforms and insisting on a traditional command culture. That criticism echoed complaints from soldiers and veterans over heavy casualties in costly front-line assaults.
Appearing at a news conference in a dark T-shirt and jeans, Fedorov accused Syrskyi of blocking reforms needed because “the war has changed completely” due to new technology.
Protesters framed Fedorov’s removal as an example of Zelenskyy siding in the feud with an entrenched military old guard over a modernizer.
Syrskyi, 60, was born when Ukraine was still part of the USSR. He attended Moscow Higher Military Command School and served in the Soviet Artillery Corps. He has long been associated with a Soviet-style, top-down command culture.
He played a key role in some of Ukraine’s biggest victories in its war, overseeing the successful defense of Kyiv in the early days of the invasion in February 2022. Seven months later, Syrskyi was credited with orchestrating the counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, one of the most significant Ukrainian victories in the war.
“I’m not fighting the (defense) ministry. I’m fighting Russia,” Syrskyi said in a column published Monday in the Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi that defended his conduct.
“The General Staff has never opposed the ministry — we have cooperated and will keep cooperating with whichever minister the state appoints. Because in the army, you don’t get to choose who you serve with. In the army, you follow orders and do your job,” he said.
Within the military, Syrskyi earned the nickname of “Butcher,” a label that gained wider currency during his command of the ill-fated defense of Bakhmut, one of the war’s longest battles that killed tens of thousands of people.
His reputation took another hit after the Ukrainian outlet Babel published an investigation last month detailing allegations of abuse within the Skelia assault regiment, a unit closely associated with Syrskyi. It reportedly has suffered higher-than-average losses. The investigation documented dozens of deaths among recruits.
The protests of Fedorov's ouster and the backlash against Syrskyi reached into the military, with the air force’s deputy commander resigning and warning it would weaken Ukraine’s air defenses. Veterans and soldiers on leave joined the protests. Many demonstrators said they wanted a new generation of generals who would prioritize preserving soldiers’ lives.
The stakes are high for Zelenskyy. The outcry appeared to leave him open to accusations that by ousting Fedorov, he was trying to get rid of a possible political rival. The episode threatened to undermine his authority.
Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko called Syrskyi “a more convenient and more comfortable” choice for Zelenskyy to keep in his government, adding that it turned out to be a “major miscalculation.”
Zelenskyy “underestimated the extent to which part of Ukrainian society had come to see Fedorov as perhaps the main driver of the positive changes in Ukraine’s war against Russia,” added Fesenko, head of the Penta Center think tank.
Russian war bloggers responded to Fedorov’s dismissal with glee, noting his role in masterminding long-range drone strikes on oil facilities that have caused a fuel crisis and midrange attacks that disrupted military logistics.
Syrskyi, some noted with grudging respect, has built a string of defenses that have stalled Russian advances.
Many Moscow commentators voiced hope that the controversy would fuel political infighting in Ukraine and weaken its military.
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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
People gather to denounce President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision to dismiss Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov after six months in the post, Thursday, July 16, 2026, Kyiv, Ukraine. Placard reads "Bring back Fedorov. Do not destroy defense capability." (AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk)
Activists hold a portrait of Ukraine's Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi demanding his resignation during a rally to denounce President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision to dismiss Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov after six months in the post, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, July 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
An activist holds slogan "My father is at the front. I am angry here on his behalf" during a rally to denounce President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision to dismiss Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov after six months in the post, Friday, July 17, 2026, Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
FILE - In this photo provided by the Press Service Of The President Of Ukraine on Nov. 19, 2024, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi speaks to parliamentarians at Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Press Service Of The President Of Ukraine via AP, File)
Outgoing Ukraine's Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov speaks during a briefing to journalists in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, July 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
