The Food Crisis and its Approach in Global Food Security Ministerial

In order to mobilise action to address global food insecurity, Secretary Blinken organised a ministerial-level meeting in New York on 18 May 2022, bringing together a broad and regionally diverse group of some thirty countries, including those most affected by food insecurity and those in a position to take action to strengthen resilience and global food security. On 19 May 2022, Secretary Blinken chaired the first signature event of the US presidency of the UN Security Council, an open discussion focused on the critical links between conflict, food security and war in Ukraine, as well as how these issues combine to increase food insecurity, as seen here.

As reported by TASS itself, Ukraine's Agriculture Minister Nikolay Solsky reported that "this year we expect a harvest 50% of last year's". The harvest of winter crops is also at risk, as well as last year's grain held in warehouses: "The fate of three crops will be at stake this summer". Clearly, though, according to the Russian Federation's ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, "food security has been compromised by the reckless macroeconomic measures of the West, amplified by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The problems arose long before the start of Russia's 'special military operation'".

In addition, on 14 March 2022, the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation signed Decree 362, which provides for a temporary ban on exports of wheat, meslin, rye, barley and maize to the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), except for Belarus. The ban will remain in force until the end of the 2021/22 marketing year, which is 30 June 2022.

In addition, according to Decree 361, exports of white and raw cane sugar were banned during the period from 15 March to 31 August 2022.

An exception to the ban is granted for exports in the form of humanitarian aid and for supplies under export licences issued by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, within the export quota (see Policy FPMA). However, two weeks later, Russia adjusted the ban so that members of the Eurasian Economic Union or EAEU (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) could import grain after receiving authorisation from the Russian Ministry of Agriculture. In reality, it was not very clear how this worked in practice.

Because of the doubts raised and these decisions taken by the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan imposed temporary quotas on wheat and wheat flour exports from 15 April 2022 until at least 15 June 2022, limiting exports of wheat grain to 1 million tonnes and wheat flour to 300,000 tonnes. According to agriculture minister Yerbol Karashukev, it was specified that during this period, local grain exporters will be able to export 1 million tonnes of grain from Kazakhstan, provided they contribute 10 per cent of this volume to Kazakhstan's state grain regulator, AO Food Contract Corporation (FCC).

According to Farangis Najibullah, the ban meant that Kazakhstan lost access to Russian wheat, of which it happens to be the largest importer in the EAEU. As a result, the Central Asian country's flour mills were left without supplies and at risk of bankruptcy. Grain from Kazakhstan turns out to be more expensive in its final price than grain imported from the Russian Federation, which means that trade costs, already high and tending to rise further because Ukraine is also a major exporter of wheat and other grains, such as maize.

Kazakhstan is a major global grain supplier, and happens to be the cornerstone on which the food security of its Central Asian neighbours can be built. Moreover, it also affects the South Caucasus, especially Georgia, as can be seen here. According to the International Grains Council (ICG), in the 2020-2021 season, Kazakhstan exported 7.3 metric tons or tonnes of wheat. In 2020, wheat accounted for more than a quarter of all exports from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan. If we look at Tajikistan, Kazakh wheat turns out to be practically vital because wheat accounted for more than 33 per cent of all Kazakhstan's exports to Tajikistan in 2020, but no less than 96 per cent of all wheat imported by Tajikistan came from Kazakhstan, as can be seen here. Tajikistan's Ministry of Agriculture has explained that the country's wheat demand exceeded 2 million tonnes, with some 864,000 tonnes of wheat being grown in the country in 2021, and the rest of the demand to be covered by imports.

Ukraine, also called "The breadbasket of Europe", has historically been one of the world's largest grain exporters before the Russian army invaded and stopped grain exports, harvesting 11% of the world's wheat and 17% of the world's maize.

Despite Russian troops blockading Ukraine's ports, through which Ukraine exports, harvesting in the country has continued, but most of the crops have either not been able to leave or are very difficult to transport. In fact, millions of tonnes of grain are blocked and the country's storage capacity is reaching its limits.

As you can see in the link above, Josef Schmidhuber, an economist with the Food and Agriculture Organisation, speaking at a press conference warned of an "almost grotesque situation" in Ukraine, where grain is being harvested as regularly planned, but cannot be moved out of the country.

"[There are] about 25 million tonnes of grain that could be exported but cannot leave the country simply because of the lack of infrastructure, the blocking of ports," Schmidhuber said.

As we can see, Schmidhuber says the war so far has not had a significant impact on harvests, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for world markets to access Ukrainian foodstuffs. As Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Nikolay Solsky explained, and Schmidhuber confirms, most of Ukraine's winter crops were planted and harvested in the west of the country, far from the worst of the fighting, so the war did not affect the recent harvest. He added that about half of the planned summer crops are already in the ground, although it is not known how much will be harvested.

In fact, Ukrainian ships have been prevented from leaving Black Sea ports for months already, and the head of the UN World Food Programme in Germany explained a few weeks ago that almost 4.5 million tonnes of grain are in containers in Ukrainian ports, unable to leave because of insecurity or because the shipping lanes are occupied.

Against this backdrop, Ukraine is increasingly opting to take its exports out of the country by rail, which, as Schmidhuber explains, can be extremely complicated. Grain leaving Ukraine by rail sometimes has to be unloaded and put into new wagons due to different rail specifications, such as different rail gauges on a single track.

The key point is that Ukraine and Russia together are some of the world's largest suppliers of key agricultural commodities essential for food security, including wheat, rapeseed, maize and sunflower oil, according to FAO data. The disruption of these crucial global supply chains has raised food prices and exacerbated hunger problems in some of the world's most vulnerable regions.

In this regard, there are some reports that Russian troops have been looting Ukrainian grain warehouses, according to the FAO, which Schmidhuber confirmed:

"There is anecdotal evidence that Russian troops have destroyed storage capacity and are looting stored grain that is available (...) there are signs that Russian troops have also been stealing agricultural equipment, which could jeopardise the productivity of future harvests (...) Russia is stealing grain and trucking it into Russia."

This has and will have an impact on world food prices, especially cereal and meat prices, according to the latest FAO monthly food price index, which remains highly volatile.

The UN said in April 2022 that 45 million people worldwide suffer from malnutrition, with up to 20 million more at risk of famine due to war. Highly vulnerable regions of the world where war is expected to amplify hunger include countries in the Sahel and West Africa, according to the World Bank, and there are highly vulnerable countries in the Middle East. With regard to Africa, the African Development Bank has already taken measures affecting food security, as well as the following aspects:

On how food security plans are being formed in the Middle East:

India, for its part, has also had to take corresponding measures in terms of food security.

As we can see, economic warfare is taking on blackmailing over not only energy, but also over something as basic as food security. The oligopolistic role of Russia and Belarus (and China) in the fertiliser sector, in whose process natural gas plays a key role, and whose exports are suspended, will also affect agricultural production in remote and war-free countries, and gives leverage and great value, for example, to the Kingdom of Morocco, which needs gas, of course.

UN Secretary General António Guterres pointed out that there is no alternative to fertilisers and soil improvers from Moscow and Minsk and wheat from Kiev to avoid a global food catastrophe. In addition, the high price of diesel fuel needed to move farm machinery is a further deterrent to the (now late) cultivation of new land.

Global calorie shortages, or even local famines, could fuel new migration flows between the global south and north, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean front. If the rising price of bread was the trigger for the convulsive Arab Spring, given the value of bread in the Middle East and how significant it is for a regime to provide or not to provide it, what can happen if the fundamentals for food are not really in place?

In this critical context, Western Europe is once again extremely vulnerable. If the two major nuclear powers (the United States and Russia) are self-sufficient in terms of both energy and food, the European Union is not in both cases. There is an urgent need to define a new European agricultural policy that will help, as far as possible, to generate food security policies that not only reduce dependence but also, with partners, establish alternatives that generate stability in the internal space and in the external space marked by the Middle East, the Sahel and West Africa, where collaboration with other actors is key.