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With Russia’s unilateral withdrawal from the Black Sea grain export agreement, the International Rescue Committee says the situation for at least 349 million people who are food insecure could worsen. The food chain in much of Africa, the Middle East and Asia would be directly affected due to the pressure on prices that this scenario brings with it.
Russia has suspended the wartime deal designed to move grain from Ukraine to parts of the world where millions of people are starving.
Although some analysts and international organizations interviewed by the AP agency do not foresee a lasting increase in the cost of basic products such as wheat, arguing that there is enough grain in the world for everyone, the truth is that many countries are already struggling with high prices. basic supply stores. The news of this Monday, July 17, only worsens the scenario.
At the moment in which the shipment of these inputs from the so-called “breadbasket of the world”, as Ukraine is nicknamed, is completely stopped, 349 million people out of at least 79, would enter a more critical scenario of food insecurity in the coming six months as estimated by the International Rescue Committee.
It would also complicate the management of the World Food Program (WFP) and the dozen programs that the agency deploys to fight world hunger. So far this year alone, 80% of the wheat used by WFP for its programs has come from Ukraine.
Drought and global warming worsen the outlook
According to Shashwat Saraf, the group’s regional emergency director for East Africa, losing millions of tons of food in Ukraine “will result in inaccessibility and unavailability of food, but it will also increase prices and impact affordability for households.”
And even if prices for wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other products leaving Ukrainian ports stabilize, countries heavily dependent on imported food such as Lebanon, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Egypt and Yemen, they would need to find suppliers that are further away, which would make the delivery process to their territory even more expensive.
Other export options have been put on the table since Moscow began threats to pull out of the UN-Turkish-brokered deal, one of which was to ship more grain across the Danube River to neighboring Black Sea ports; However, these routes have a lower capacity than maritime shipments and, being more expensive routes, have been rejected by some countries.
Other traders, by contrast, have been optimistic about continuing shipments through the Black Sea, even though that would require broad military and government approval to become a reality.
With AP and Reuters.
