ELZUBI to Al Jazeera and the Prolonged Food Crisis

ELZUBI to Al Jazeera and the Prolonged Food Crisis
Is the Arab strategic reserve sufficient?
Food security is not merely grain in a silo… it is an entire chain of supply, energy, and fertilizers.
Realistic assessment: uneven, and mostly insufficient.
• Jordan maintains a wheat reserve covering about eight months of domestic consumption.
• Saudi Arabia and Egypt usually hold reserves between three and six months.
• Most countries in the region keep stocks ranging from three to six months, some even less.
But the more accurate question should not be: “How many months are in the silo?”
Rather:
• Do we have operational reserves of fertilizers and agricultural diesel?
• Do we have sufficient diversity in import ports, away from routes vulnerable to closure?
These components are the weakest link, and they are what should measure our true readiness.

ELZUBI to Qatar’s QBC Television on Food Shocks

ELZUBI to Qatar’s QBC Television on Food Shocks
• Food, fertilizer, and energy prices under the Strait of Hormuz crisis.
• What we are witnessing today is not a crisis of food scarcity, but rather a crisis of production costs and logistics—where energy, shipping, and fertilizers intersect in a single chokepoint: the Strait of Hormuz.
• This is precisely what makes it more complex than the 2022 crisis, because it cannot be solved by increasing grain supply alone.