Under a lonely grove of trees in a field filled with bushes of bitter yellow eggplant — a Senegalese specialty — farmer Fallou Faye reaches into a sack and presents a crumbling brown material, an unlikely hero in a geopolitical crisis affecting farmers and ordinary people across the globe.
“Before, a sack of fertilizer cost 7,000 francs,” says Faye in Mboro, part of a lush vegetable growing region in eastern Senegal, as a braying donkey protests at the midday heat. “Now it costs 35,000 ($58; ¥8,000).”
Far from Ukraine, West African farmers like Faye are feeling the cascading effects of war there.