How’s affecting us as volunteers the increases of prices?

In the last weeks and months, we have been warning about inflation in the overall world. Some economist say that this fact is due to the post-pandemic situation and some of them due to the energy price hikes as a consequence of the conflict that is happening at the moment, or maybe a combination of boths.

Me, as a volunteer, I have noticed a huge increase in the prices I have to face for my dairy products, suffering almost a double effort in my wallet. But why is this happening? Well, Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of agricultural fertilisers that are used to grow crops. The conflict we are facing has created disruptions to the supply as well as the sanctions have made its exports more difficult.

Additionally, bread is experimenting a huge increase in prices. Well, that cannot be a surprise when in Ukraine fields have been destroyed, and that is because Ukraine is known as the biggest producer of wheat products in Europe. A research done by Focus says that the price of pasta has increased by up to 40 percent since last January.

The inflation rate in Germany, measured as the year-on-year change in the consumer price index, stood at +7.9% in May 2022. The main reason for the high inflation still is price rises for energy. In order to face this increase, Germany has implemented measures such as the 9 euros’ monthly ticket, that allows you to take all regional type of transports during a whole month (in June, July and August) for the price of 9 euros and a one-off energy tax-relief payment

Nevertheless, this type of measures help citizen in the transportation costs, while the increased process of first necessities products continue to increase every day. We, as volunteers, who just receive a low quantity of money to live, are facing higher effort to make ends meet. Additionally, ours flight for coming back home after the end of our volunteering have suffered a huge increase, runnung the budget we have short and having us to spend more money from our pocket.

If this price dynamic persists in the medium-long term, it could be a threat to food security in food-importing countries, as well as an increase in political and social risks. In fact, this situation would increase the number of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition, in a context in which economic inequalities between countries are likely to increase due to the collateral effects of Covid-19. The risk of socio-political unrest is likely to increase in the 12 months following a pandemic, so tensions related to population’s access to food due to strong food inflation could be the trigger for socio-political unrest