Beasley said even before the Ukraine crisis. A global food crisis was already emerging. Now the crisis is the "worst humanitarian crisis since World War II." 

"Just when you think the world food crisis couldn't get any worse well over a year ago, you had Ethiopia and Afghanistan, and then the breadbasket of the world [Ukraine] — just got the longest breadlines of the world — and so now because of this crisis, we're taking food from the hungry to give to the starving."

"What happens when you take a nation [Ukraine] that normally feeds 400 million people and sideline that … it's devastating to global food security," he warned. 

Beasley said if you look at the economic conditions during the Arab Spring in 2011 — conditions today are "actually worse," which has already sparked social unrest in several countries