In an increasingly unstable world, food can often equal power. Because whether it’s the economic warfare of tariffs, conflict in the Middle East, or an increasingly fragile climate, a country’s access to food can greatly influence its authority to navigate such major threats.
Yet while nearly all countries produce food, only a few are big enough to exert power over the food system at large. This is often not just down to exactly what they grow, but the role of those commodities in extensive supply chains around the world.
China, for example, is the world’s largest consumer of food and a dominant agricultural producer of pork, vegetables and seafood, yet its enormous domestic demand and focus on internal food security means it only exports a fraction of what it grows and is in fact one of the world’s biggest importers of goods like soybeans.
Brazil, by contrast, is now a leading exporter of foods including soy, sugar, and coffee, while Russia is the biggest exporter of wheat. Their influence arises from not just from the volume they produce, but what they produce.
“If you want to be influential, you need to look at human consumption because animals don’t vote,” says Carlos Mera, head of agri-commodity market research at Rabobank. “That’s wheat, primarily. Also rice and veg oils.”
For any food manufacturer, considering the modern dynamics of global food production is vital if they are to minimise the risk of factories running dry from a political crisis on the other side of the world.
After all, disruption rarely stays local. A drought in Brazil can affect global meat prices from reduced soy supply, while policy changes in Russia could quickly tighten wheat supply across multiple continents.
“For food manufacturers, retailers and policymakers… resilience increasingly depends on understanding the global network behind everyday ingredients and how impacts in one part of the system can quickly cascade across the rest,” says Todd Redwood, BSI’s global managing director of consumer, retail and food.
On this, there are perhaps two crucial current trends to consider. The first is that if geopolitical risks continue to escalate, more countries will likely focus on boosting their own self-sufficiency. This is a consistent historical pattern of countries who feel under threat, from Europe in the wake of WW2 to China over the last few decades.
The other is that the current tariff war is quickly evolving into a subsidy arms race. In the US, the Trump administration recently responded to “years of unjustified trade actions” by giving farmers billions of dollars in aid, while further south Brazil boosted its ethanol mandate to boost domestic sugar prices and Argentina has massively lowered its export taxes.
Can countries feed themselves?
The combined result will quickly affect global supplies if countries opt to keep more for domestic consumption, says Mera, a dramatic u-turn after several decades of governments and businesses placing their faith in global trade to deliver food.
Many countries are consequently starting to respond already, with Finland, Norway and Indonesia among those already rebuilding their national food reserves. Sweden has set aside $63m to re-establish emergency food stockpiles with plans to bank enough for each citizen to have 3,000 calories every day for a year.
The obvious concern is that this quickly leads to price surges as seen in 2008, when fears of supply triggered export bans and precautionary stock building, causing sizeable price spikes despite global harvests remaining healthy.
“Once even a few economies go down the road of food protectionism, everybody feels like they have to do it as well,” Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC, told the Financial Times earlier this year. He warned “food might be one of the first casualties” of rising geopolitical tension and protectionist policies.
So where can food manufacturers turn if one of its major supply routes is cut off? Which countries are pumping the most onto global food markets? And ultimately, who are the power brokers that dominate global food supply, both now and in the future? Here is a rundown of the top five.
USA
Much like its geopolitical hegemony, the US has long enjoyed an unrivalled position as the most powerful exporter into the global food system.
The US exported more corn last year than its two nearest rivals combined (Brazil and Argentina) and has historically held a similarly dominant position in the soybean market.
With these two commodities sitting at the base of thousands of global supply chains, underpinning everything from livestock to cooking oils, sweeteners to food ingredients, the US has long sat in a position of significant influence over global food supply.
“The United States is in effect, the industrial backbone of modern food production,” says Todd Redwood at BSI.
There are, however, cracks now emerging in its position at the top with Brazil firmly on its tail.
The story is most apparent in soybeans where Brazil has grown to be the world’s largest exporter in recent years, its position cemented ever since China, the world’s largest soybean importer, turned away from the US following the opening of a trade war during Donald Trump’s first term in the White House.
Back in 2010, the US dominated exports of soybeans, shipping 41m tonnes onto global markets and making up almost half of total world exports. However, with its exports stagnant ever since while Brazil has enjoyed exponential growth, the US’s share was last year down to 23%.
It is not the only major crops in which the US has lost a dominant global position. “The US has lost the crown on a number of products,” says Carlos Mera at Rabobank.
In wheat, for example, the US was once the world’s breadbasket but lost its title as the biggest exporter in 2013 and now sits fourth behind Russia, Canada, and Australia.
Its decline is stark, falling from 50% of global exports at its peak in 1973 to a near record-low of 11% last year.
In many ways, this is intentional with US farmers switching to more profitable crops like corn and soybeans in search of greater returns.
But if the US continues to engage in trade battles while its rivals boost both their production and export capabilities, food importers may increasingly turn elsewhere for their necessary supplies.
Brazil
Brazil’s agricultural transformation over the last 40 years has revolutionised both the country itself and the global food system.
Brazil has turned from a major net food importer in the 1970s into a global agricultural powerhouse which is now the biggest exporter of foods including soy, sugar, coffee, and orange juice.
Last year, it shipped over 60% of world soybean exports, more than half of sugar exports, and over a quarter of coffee exports. Its influence is perhaps greatest in orange juice though, where it makes up over three quarters of global exports.
For many countries like the UK, Brazil is now a crucial supplier and the biggest outside of Europe and North America. The concern for any food manufacturer is that Brazil sits right on the frontline of climate change with the country seeing a five-fold increase in climate change-related disasters since the 1990s, according to one study last year.
Extreme temperatures are a major threat to the yield and quality of climate-sensitive crops like coffee, which saw sharp prices between 2023 and 2025 due to an extended drought in Brazil.
The other potential concern is if Brazil were to make any major changes to its exports to protect domestic food security.
After returning to office in 2023, president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva began rebuilding public food stocks that had been dismantled under previous administrations.
“Our goal is to guarantee food sovereignty and price fluctuations that occur in large part due to climate change,” Paulo Teixeira, Brazil’s minister for agrarian development and family agriculture, says.
The government spent about $100mn on stockpiling in 2025, buying mainly corn and, after devastating floods hit Rio Grande do Sul in 2024, resuming public purchases of rice.
Russia
The Soviet Union could not feed itself during the Cold War and was forced to depend on grain from foes like the US and Canada.
Food security has therefore been a major priority over the past 30 years, with market-friendly reforms, heavy state investment, and a more friendly growing climate helping Russia develop into the world’s largest exporter of wheat.
It took the title in 2017, and has held onto it since for all but one year. Last year, it supplied around a fifth of global exports.
It has remained relatively strong even amid intensifying climate volatility that damaged thousands of hectares of crops in 2025. That year, wheat exports stayed above 40m tonnes, a mark unthinkable even a decade ago.
For Vladimir Putin, agriculture is clearly a priority with the president targeting a further 50% rise in agricultural exports by 2030 to help support the Russian economy and give it essential clout on the international stage.
For any global food manufacturers though, while there are no sanctions on Russian agricultural, that doesn’t mean its supplies are entirely risk free.
“If you’re buying from Russia, will you be able to access its wheat forever?” says Rabobank’s Carlos Mera. “That’s a big question mark. We could be in a situation where Russia reassesses which countries they’re willing to sell to.”
It is certainly something Russia has considered. Back in 2022, former Russian president and senior security official Dmitry Medvedev said “we will supply food and crops only to our friends,” calling it a “quiet weapon” in the fight against Western sanctions.
He added: “Quiet but ominous.”
India
India and China are the undisputed rulers of rice, together making up around half of the world’s total production each year.
However, while China keeps almost its entire supply for domestic consumption, India ships enough abroad to comfortably make it the world’s biggest exporter.
Though it now consistently makes up around 40% of global exports –three times more than its closest rival Vietnam - this is only around 15% of its production, reflecting both a desire to ensure its own food security and import restrictions in other countries keen to protect their own farmers.
The country has more than one string to its bow and also leads the charge as the world’s largest milk producer and the major supplier of the world’s spice trade. All-in-all, it makes it a significant player in global food system which food manufacturers are wise to keep an eye on.
“Policy decisions in India, such as export restrictions on staples, can have immediate impacts on food availability and prices across many importing regions,” says Todd Redwood at BSI.
Its trajectory is also seemingly heading in only one direction, with New Delhi targeting major growth in its food exports through new trade deals with the EU and the Gulf.
Australia
As world’s second largest exporter of rapeseed oil, the fourth largest wheat exporter, and the fourth largest sugar exporter, Australia is undoubtedly a major supplier of food commodities onto the global market.
And while it may not quite hit the same scale as other countries on this list, its geography means it fills a vital niche as a major producer in a region typically lacking in several essential food types.
“The Pacific areas has a major deficit in commodities like wheat and sugar. So in that sense, Australia is very important,” says Carlos Mera.
Indonesia, for example, is a major consumer of wheat yet cannot grow any due to its tropical climate. Australia is crucial in filling that gap.
However, the country’s potential as a major future food source for Asian countries remains debatable, according to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering.
“Some suggest that Australia could play a major role in food export to the Asia region,” it says, “however, the sheer scale of increasing populations raises doubts about the extent of Australia’s contribution.”
One of the key concerns if how food production can continue to rise in the face of climate change, natural resource depletion, and competition for land and water driven by mining and urban expansion.
