Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Grappling with food system risks
Agriculture | Climate change | Global Trade
August 31, 2022 – Constricted food supplies as the result of geopolitical conflicts and climatic events are further straining the budgets of countries with low purchasing power. Some nations have endured high levels of unemployment and budget deficits as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The combined economic stressors may make it more difficult for some of these governments to cope with food shortages in the current moment compared with previous crises, such as the Arab Spring.
To read the article, see “A reflection on global food security challenges amid the war in Ukraine and the early impact of climate change,” August 17, 2022.
Interactive
customizer here
Visual form
A dashboard-style with small multiple line charts and country tabs.
Layout / body structure
The visual is arranged as a country profile card. A headline across the top states that some countries’ ability to cope with food shortages and price shocks has deteriorated since 2010, a row of country tabs sits underneath, and the active country view then breaks into a left population panel and two columns of mini charts read top to bottom.
What is being compared
The chart compares the resilience of different countries, including Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, across several food-system and macroeconomic stress indicators. Within each country view, it also compares three time points – 2010, 2019, and 2022 – to show how those conditions have shifted over time.
Measurement system
The reader tracks population in millions plus six separate indicators with their own scales: self-sufficiency as production divided by consumption, stocks-to-use as ending stocks divided by consumption, budget surplus or deficit as a share of GDP, government debt-to-GDP, unemployment rate, and exchange rate in local currency to the US dollar. The small charts use the same three date marks, which makes the before-and-after movement easier to compare across measures.
Visible structure inside the graphic
On the Egypt view shown in the source sequence, the left edge starts with a population count of 102 million illustrated by a grid of blue squares. To the right sit six light-blue line charts: self-sufficiency, stocks-to-use, and budget balance in the left column, then government debt-to-GDP, unemployment, and exchange rate in the right column. The country tabs above the grid let the reader switch the whole set of panels to another country without changing the overall layout.
Main takeaway from the visual
The visual makes the deterioration story concrete by showing several buffers weakening at once. In the Egypt profile, self-sufficiency edges down, stocks-to-use drops more sharply, debt creeps higher, and the budget and currency lines move in the wrong direction, so the dashboard reads as a stacked picture of reduced ability to absorb a food-price shock.
Key standout values or extremes
The strongest anchored number on the visible screen is Egypt’s population at 102 million. The self-sufficiency line sits in roughly the mid-40s and slips slightly by 2022, stocks-to-use falls from about the low 20s to the mid teens, government debt-to-GDP rises from around 80 percent toward 90 percent, and the exchange-rate panel climbs from a very low starting point to the teens by 2022.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
The reader can move through country tabs to swap the entire dashboard from one national profile to another while keeping the same six-metric layout and the same 2010, 2019, and 2022 comparison points.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.