Speaking at an Asia Society event in New York, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar issued a stern warning that the world could face a severe food crisis in the coming months due to compounding geopolitical conflicts, escalating energy market volatility, and widespread disruptions across global supply chains. Ongoing hostilities, particularly in Ukraine and the Middle East, have severely restricted grain shipments through vital corridors like the Black Sea while squeezing fertiliser production across West Asia and Russia, directly raising agricultural input costs and threatening future harvest yields. Jaishankar highlighted how political friction around energy markets has exacerbated freight, storage, and transportation expenses, creating a dangerous ripple effect that hits developing economies in the Global South hardest. Combined with capital flight toward safer markets and unpredictable climate patterns like Super El Niño, these converging pressures threaten to destabilize global agricultural trade networks, creating unprecedented operational uncertainty for ocean carriers, freight operators, and food importers worldwide.