With its fertile soil and extensive agricultural land, Ukraine has long been described as one of the world’s barns. But Russia’s unprovoked assault is now putting a lot of pressure on Ukrainian food production and exports. The dominant effects are being felt all over the world.
Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports has already raised world food prices and threatens to cause catastrophic food shortages in parts of the world, the UN said.
“For people around the world, war, along with other crises, threatens to unleash an unprecedented wave of famine and misery, leaving social and economic chaos in its wake,” the secretary-general of the the UN, Antonio Guterres.
Here’s what you need to know.
What is happening?
The Russian invasion has affected the entire food production and supply chain of Ukraine: from planting to harvesting and exports.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that between 20% and 30% of Ukraine’s agricultural land will remain unplanted or harvested this year due to the war.
This is partly due to the fact that large tracts of agricultural land in Ukraine – about half of the area planted with winter wheat and about 40% of the area planted with rye – were under Russian occupation in the March, which disrupted the planting season.
But the war is also causing a shortage of workers, due to the large number of people who have fled their homes or become involved in volunteer units of the Ukrainian armed forces.
International sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine have also had an impact on global supply of fuel, fertilizers and products.
What about the already harvested grain?
Ukrainian authorities and some international officials have accused Russia of stealing grain and other commodities from the country in the areas it occupies.
Denys Marchuk, deputy chairman of the Public Union of the Agrarian Council of Ukraine, said in a statement on Wednesday that Russia had “stolen some 600,000 tons of grain” from Ukrainian farmers.
He said the grain was stolen from the occupied regions of southern Ukraine and then transported to the ports of the Russian-occupied territory of Crimea, specifically Sevastopol, and added that it is then transported to the Middle East.
The Kremlin has denied the allegations, calling them “fake news.”
However, on Wednesday, the leader of the Moscow-backed military administration for the occupied part of Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region boasted of Ukrainian grain-filled train cars leaving the Russian-occupied city of Zaporizhzhia. Melitopol to the Crimea.
Speaking to Solovyov Live, an online video platform, Yevhen Balytskyi made it clear that the plan is to further increase these exports. “It can be predicted that in the near future these deliveries will increase hundreds of times,” he said.
Satellite photos of Sevastopol’s Crimean port provided by Maxar Technologies last month appeared to show Russian ships loaded with Ukrainian grain. Another set of satellite images revealed that one of the ships arrived in the Syrian port of Latakia last month, its second voyage in four weeks. In normal times, Ukraine would export about three-quarters of the grain it produces. According to the European Commission, about 90% of these exports were shipped by sea from the ports of the Black Sea in Ukraine.
Russia is currently blocking maritime access to Ukrainian-held Black Sea ports, so not even grain still under Ukrainian control can be exported to the many countries that depend on it.
Ukraine has tried to increase its grain exports by rail to make up for some of the lost capacity, but this is a challenge due to logistical problems. For example, trains in Ukraine run on slightly wider routes than in most of Europe, which means that the grain has to be moved from one set of wagons to another at the border.
Why is Russia doing this?
Accusations that Russia is using food as a weapon of war have been on the rise since the first reports of grain theft by Russian troops emerged in March.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday that food had become part of the Kremlin’s “terror arsenal”.
“This is a cold, cruel and calculated siege of Putin in some of the most vulnerable countries and people in the world … food has now become part of the Kremlin’s arsenal of terror and we cannot tolerate it,” he said. dir von der Leyen. EU legislators.
The idea of using food shortages to provoke fear has especially dark connotations in Ukraine due to its deep institutional memory of a deadly famine of 1932-1933.
Known as the Holodomor, or the famine of terror, it was artificially designed by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who wiped out food supplies from Ukrainian peasants, killing millions.
Under Ukrainian law, the Holodomor is considered an act of genocide, with the aim of forcing Ukrainians to submit and obstructing efforts to build an independent Ukrainian state. The children learn about it at school and the country stops to observe a minute of silence during the annual Holodomor Remembrance Day. There are memorials throughout the country and a large museum dedicated to the Holodomor and its victims in Kyiv.
What does this mean for the world?
The crisis in Ukraine is having a side effect all over the world because both Ukraine and Russia are major exporters of food. World food prices have risen 17% since January, according to the FAO. Cereal prices have risen more than 21%.
The importance of Russia and Ukraine for the global food supply cannot be underestimated. Nearly a third of world wheat exports and 60% of world sunflower oil exports came from the two countries last year. Of every 100 calories in food marketed worldwide, 12 come from Russia and Ukraine, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that millions of people around the world could starve to death if Russia does not allow Ukraine to export grain from its ports.
“We cannot export our wheat, corn, vegetable oil and other products that have played a stabilizing role in the global market. This means that, unfortunately, dozens of countries can face a physical shortage of food. Millions of people could starve to death if Russia’s Black Sea blockade continues, “he said in an address recorded at the Time 100 Gala on Thursday.
A new report by the FAO and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) released this week warned that the war in Ukraine could push up to 47 million people into “acute food insecurity”, which will increase the total number of people at risk of falling. to hunger at 323 million.
According to FAO data, some of the world’s most vulnerable countries are among those most dependent on Ukrainian imports. Lebanon, Tunisia, Somalia and Libya depended on Ukraine for at least half of their wheat imports. Eritrea obtained 47% of its wheat imports from Ukraine and the remaining 53% from Russia.
The UN program to combat food insecurity buys about half of its wheat in Ukraine each year.
Is something being done?
International leaders are pulling the strings of diplomacy as they try to push Moscow to a deal that will unblock exports.
UN officials have devised a plan to extract grain from the Ukrainian port of Odessa across the Black Sea with Turkey acting as a guarantor of the agreement.
Turkey said it was open to trying to negotiate a deal with Russia, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Ankara on Wednesday to discuss the issue.
Although no agreement was reached, Cavusoglu said “there could be new ground for negotiations” between Ukraine and Russia.
He said there were “multiple ideas” on how to set up an open corridor for Ukrainian grain exports and that a UN plan was “reasonable and implementable”, but called for more talks.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that no agreement had yet been reached on Ukrainian grain exports to Turkey or the Middle East, but that work was being done.
The Kremlin has previously denied allegations that Russia is obstructing Ukraine’s grain exports, but has blamed the West and Kyiv.
Separately, the United States is working to bring temporary grain storage containers from Ukraine to the country, a temporary measure because it aims to mitigate the crisis.
CNN’s Mick Krever, Olga Voitovych, Tim Lister, Niamh Kennedy, Benjamin Brown, Radina Gigova, Anna Chernova, Kylie Atwood, Jennifer Hansler, Alex Marquardt, and Jeremy Herb contributed to the report.