Evidence since 2022 shows a large, war‑linked shock to global food security that plausibly pushed tens of millions of additional people into serious hunger, in line with the low end of Friedberg’s range, but not the extreme 300–400 million figure.

Key points:

• The UN’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2023 report estimates 735 million people were chronically undernourished in 2022, about 122 million more people than in 2019. It explicitly attributes this rise to multiple crises, including COVID‑19, climate extremes, and the repercussions of the war in Ukraine on food and fertilizer prices.(who.int)
• SOFI’s forward‑looking analysis projects that by 2030 there will be almost 600 million chronically undernourished people, around 119 million more than in a scenario with neither the pandemic nor the Ukraine war, and about 23 million more than in a scenario where the war in Ukraine did not occur. This implies the war’s contribution alone is on the order of tens of millions of extra undernourished people, not hundreds of millions.(nutritionconnect.org)
• The Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) finds that people facing acute food insecurity at crisis or worse levels (IPC Phase 3+) rose from 193 million in 2021 to 258 million in 2022, with the report stating that economic shocks including the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine (through higher food, fuel, and fertilizer prices) became major drivers of hunger.(wfp.org) By 2024, nearly 300 million people in 53 countries were in acute food crisis, a further increase, again driven by conflict, economic shocks, climate events, and reduced aid.(theguardian.com)
• On the fertilizer‑specific mechanism Friedberg emphasized, FAO/AMIS analysis indicates that global fertilizer trade volumes were not severely curtailed over the medium term; by 2024 total fertilizer trade was actually slightly higher (about 2 million tonnes) than in 2020–2021, even though prices spiked in 2022 after the invasion.(scribd.com) Food commodity prices also peaked in March 2022 and then fell; by mid‑2025 global cereal prices were more than 20% below that peak, and FAO was forecasting record global cereal production for 2025.(reuters.com) This undermines the most catastrophic fertilizer‑shortage scenario.

Putting this together:

• Direction and order of magnitude (low end): The data support the claim that the Ukraine war and associated input‑price shocks produced an additional tens of millions of people suffering serious, long‑lasting hunger relative to a no‑war baseline. UN projections that isolate the Ukraine war’s effect (~23 million extra chronically undernourished by 2030) sit squarely in the "tens of millions" range Friedberg mentioned.(nutritionconnect.org)
• Upper bound clearly too high: There is no evidence that the war‑and‑fertilizer channel has created an extra 300–400 million people consuming near‑starvation rations, and global fertilizer trade and cereal output recovered more than feared. The extreme upper end of his range has not materialized and is inconsistent with current projections.
• Measurement caveat: Friedberg defined starvation as under 1,200 calories per day for a year, but global monitoring uses different thresholds (undernourishment, severe food insecurity, IPC phases). That makes an exact numerical test impossible, but all available metrics point to increases on the scale of tens of millions, not hundreds of millions.

Overall, the core prediction that the Ukraine war’s food and fertilizer shock would add at least tens of millions of people to the global ranks of the starving or severely hungry is supported by subsequent UN analyses, even though his most alarming figure of 300–400 million additional starving people has not occurred and now looks exaggerated.