Russian hostilities in Ukraine are preventing grain from leaving the “breadbasket of the world” and making food more expensive across the globe, threatening to worsen shortages, hunger and political instability in developing countries. Together, Russia and Ukraine export nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley, more than 70% of its sunflower oil and are big suppliers of corn. Russia is the top global fertilizer producer. World food prices were already climbing, and the war made things worse, preventing some 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain from getting to the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia. Weeks of negotiations on safe corridors to get grain out of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports have made little progress, with urgency rising as the summer harvest season arrives. “This needs to happen in the next couple of months (or) it’s going to be horrific,” said Anna Nagurney, who studies crisis management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is on the board of the Kyiv School of Economics. She says 400 million people worldwide rely on Ukrainian food supplies. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization projects up to 181 million people in 41 countries could face food crisis or worse levels of hunger this year. Here’s a look at the global food crisis: WHAT’S THE SITUATION? Typically, 90% of wheat and other grain from Ukraine’s fields are shipped to world markets by sea but have been held up by Russian blockades of the Black Sea coast. Some grain is being rerouted through Europe by rail, road and river, but the amount is a drop in the bucket compared with sea routes. The shipments also are backed up because Ukraine’s rail gauges don’t match those of its neighbors to the west. Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister, Markian Dmytrasevych, asked European Union lawmakers for help exporting more grain, including expanding the use of a Romanian port on the Black Sea, building more cargo terminals on the Danube River and cutting red tape for freight crossing at the Polish border. But that means food is even farther from those that need it. “Now you have to go all the way around Europe to come back into the Mediterranean. It really has added an incredible amount of cost to Ukrainian grain,” said Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. Ukraine has only been able to export 1.5 million to 2 million tons of grain a month since the war, down from more than 6 million tons, said Glauber, a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Russian grain isn’t getting out, either. Moscow argues that Western sanctions on its banking and shipping industries make it impossible for Russia to export food and fertilizer and are scaring off foreign shipping companies from carrying it. Russian officials insist sanctions be lifted to get grain to global markets. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other Western leaders say, however, that sanctions don’t touch food. WHAT ARE THE SIDES SAYING? Ukraine has accused Russia of shelling agricultural infrastructure, burning fields, stealing grain and trying to sell it to Syria after Lebanon and Egypt refused to buy it. Satellite images taken in late May by Maxar Technologies show Russian-flagged ships in a port in Crimea being loaded with grain and […]

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