Milk, rice, potatoes… the West is facing a glut problem while the world battles hunger crisis

In the past two years, the world has faced a unique crisis where the United States, Europe, and Asia have had an oversupply of potatoes, milk, and rice and as many as 20 per cent of Africans are suffering from hunger.

The oversupply in the United States, Europe, and Asia is such that prices of staples like potatoes, rice, and milk have fallen to the extent that they are being given away for free, used to make biogas, and even being destroyed.

On the other hand, as many as 20 per cent of Africans suffered from hunger, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Potatoes, milk, rice glut from Europe to Asia

In Germany, potatoes are in such an oversupply that designated distribution sites are providing them for free to people across the country.

Last year, German farmers had the highest potato harvest in 25 years, which was more than 2 million tonnes above the average, according to Financial Times.

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As the oversupply is far more than the processing capacity, potatoes are piled up in storage. In addition to distributing potatoes for free, farmers have been forced to sell their produce to biogas plants or sell it as animal feed, as per the newspaper.

Other than Germany, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands have also had good produce this year. As Chinese, Indian, and Canadian farmers have also had good productions, European farmers do not have any feasible export market as well to divert their excess production.

Similarly, most British dairy farmers have seen milk prices fall by around 25 per cent and operating margins squeeze to 1-2 per cent over of overproduction, Paul Tompkins, a third-generation dairy farmer in the Vale of York and chair of the NFU Dairy Board, told edairynews.

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Farmers are in a flux as the ability to cut supply is limited as cows must be milked daily and dairies cannot be shut down due to hygiene requirements.

In the United States, farmers have harvested a record crop for the 2025–26 marketing year with 23.6 billion bushels — up 8 per cent from last year.

The High Plains Journal reported that there would be “ample surplus” with American farmers after fulfilling domestic needs.

In Asia, bumper harvests in India and elsewhere have led to such an oversupply that global rice prices have tumbled to their lowest level in eight years, as per FT.

Hunger crisis worsens in Africa, West Asia

As Europe, Africa, and the United States are tackling oversupply, the share of the hunger-affected population in Africa and West Asia has risen.

The proportion of the population facing hunger in Africa surpassed 20 per cent in 2024 to reach 307 million people whereas around 12.7 per cent of the population —around 39 million people— may have faced hunger in West Asia in 2024, the WHO said in a report last year.

Moreover, the WHO has projected that 512 million people could be chronically undernourished by 2030 — around 60 per cent of them in Africa.

In yet another marker of inequity in food and hunger, the WHO reported that even as the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet fell from 2.76 billion in 2019 to 2.60 billion in 2024 across the world, the situation was vastly different in different parts of the world.

In low-income countries where the cost of a healthy diet rose more sharply than in higher-income countries, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet increased from 464 million in 2019 to 545 million in 2024, according to the WHO.

In lower-middle-income countries —excluding India— the number rose from 79 million in 2019 to 869 million over the same period, the report said.