Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyy said that after the start of Russia’s invasion on February 24, grain exports from Ukraine decreased from 4-5 million tons per month to several hundred thousand tons. Reduced exports from Ukraine could provoke a global food shortage.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Vadym Denysenko said Russians have started destroying Ukrainian oil and food supplies. He also said Russia has started deploying more troops at the Ukrainian border.
With far less Ukrainian and Russian grain and fertilizer entering global markets, experts fear that a bleak period of scarcer, pricier food will arrive this year.
EXperts warn that not only will many Ukrainians go hungry, but so will hundreds of millions around the world, perhaps triggering the greatest food crisis since WW1.
Ukraine and Russia together produce nearly 30 percent of the world’s traded wheat and 12 percent of its calories. Without them, soaring food prices and shortages could touch off a wave of instability the world hasn’t seen since the Arab Spring of 2012. The war has all but shut down grain exports from both countries. And since the two nations (along with Russia’s sanctioned ally Belarus) also supply vast amounts of fertilizer, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine could affect every farmer on earth this year, and into the foreseeable future.
