The Global Food Security Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit measures the risks and factors that drive food security. Ukraine scored 47, preceded by Belarus at 46 and followed by Tunisia at 48. Some of its closest neighbours, including Russia, Poland and Czech Republic, for instance, landed at 40, 27 and 23 respectively. The leaders of the Index are the US, Norway and France, while predominantly Sub-Saharan African countries close the list albeit showing the biggest gain in the overall food security change since last year.
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According to the EIU’s estimates, Ukraine has nine major strengths and three challenges, the strength meaning any indicator scoring above 75 on a scale of 0 to 100. The lower the score, the worse the challenge.
The top three strengths for Ukraine include almost no undernourishment, population under global poverty line or food deprivation – the country scored from 100 to 99.2 on these. Others where Ukraine scored from 98.5 to 75 are food safety, agricultural import tariffs, volatility of agricultural production, sufficiency of supply, presence of food safety net programs and access to financing for farmers.
The biggest challenges Ukraine is facing according to the EIU are corruption where Ukraine scored 0, GDP per capita (PPP) with 10.9 and food consumption as a share of household expenditures at 23.7.
As to affordability, availability, and quality and safety rates, Ukraine scored 55.5, 57.5 and 65.7 respectively with 75-50 indicating good performance.
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