Hey, Cain. How much of an issue do you think the food/grain/fertilizer/etc shortages are going to be?
In combination with a lot of other factors, it's not pretty. Uptake from Canada, Australia and China is helping offset a significant loss from the Ukrainian and Russian markets but it only goes so far and China in particular will likely be struggling due to harvest conditions there. I'd say further price rises are all but inevitable at this point.
Are we looking at a situation where millions of impoverished people die of starvation? That bad?
Potentially. Any price instability when people are on thin margins is always going to carry that risk, and this disruption is significant (low double digits of global trade, but that's still a big plurality given we're talking about...well, global trade).
The countries I would worry about most are Afghanistan, which is already suffering a starvation crisis partially created by the freezing of assets by the US State Department, Ethiopia and Yemen. All three rely primarily on a mix of Russian and Ukrainian exports and are also suffering from ongoing fighting, and so are extremely exposed to this kind of thing. To a lesser extent Egypt, Syria and Iran are also heavily affected and there may be increased domestic instability as a result of this