Guterres calls for the continuation of the grain agreement and prioritizing global food security

July 8 () –

The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has defended this Friday the importance of the grain agreement and has called for the continuation of this commitment to “help guarantee that these products (food and fertilizers) can reach global markets without problems, efficiently and at scale.

Guterres has underlined the “indispensable” nature of this pact, sealed between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in July 2022, “in support of world food security”.

“These agreements are all too rare a demonstration of what the world can do when it focuses on the great challenges of our time,” the UN Secretary General said in a statement.

The United Nations representative has argued that “together, the agreements are contributing to sustained reductions in world food prices, which are now more than 23 percent below the all-time highs reached in March of last year.”

Likewise, Guterres has called for prioritizing global food security and has ensured that both he and his team remain “fully committed to taking advantage of the progress already made.”

The governments of Russia and Ukraine –with the mediation of Turkey and the United Nations– reached an agreement in June 2022 for the transport of agricultural and food products, one of the few agreements reached by the parties involved in the conflict since the outbreak of the war, in February of that year.

However, after several extensions, Moscow has warned that the pact will not be extended beyond July 17 if some failures in the agreement have not been corrected by that date, which they consider to benefit Ukraine more since Russian products are not being transported. .