Rome, May 20 (QNA) - The closure of the Strait of Hormuz represents the beginning of a systemic agrifood shock, which could lead to a severe global food price crisis within six months to a year, warned the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in a report.

The organization noted that these disruptions are not merely a temporary shipping issue, stressing that the window for preventive action is closing rapidly.

It added that governments, international financial institutions, the private sector, and international organizations must take decisions on alternative trade routes, limit export restrictions, protect food aid flows, and establish mechanisms to absorb rising transport costs. 

FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero said, "The time has come to start seriously thinking about how to increase the absorption capacity of countries and how to increase their resilience to this choke so that we start to minimize the potential impacts".

  The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices of a basket of globally traded food commodities, rose for a third consecutive month in April, driven by high energy costs and disruptions linked to the conflict in the Middle East. 

As such, the organization recommended, in the short term, shifting trade to alternative land and sea routes and refraining from imposing export restrictions on commodities such as energy, fertilizers, and agricultural inputs, as well as ensuring that food aid flows are exempt from any trade restrictions. 

In the medium term, FAO called for providing emergency credit lines for farmers aligned with harvest seasons, expanding the use of digital farmer registries to enable rapid disbursement of assistance, and reactivating the food crisis financing mechanism established in 2022. 

FAO warned that the situation could worsen with the onset of the El Nino phenomenon, which is expected to bring droughts and disrupt rainfall patterns in several regions. (QNA)