Ukraine has joined the signing of the Roadmap for Global Food Security, aimed at combating the global food crisis, which is increasingly aggravated due to the blocking of Ukrainian seaports by the Russian Federation, the country’s key infrastructure for the export of agricultural crops, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food announced on Thursday.
The corresponding document was signed on May 18 following a meeting of the heads of relevant agricultural ministries at the UN site in New York.
On the ministry’s website, it is specified that Minister of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine Mykola Solsky, in his address to the ministers of the agro-industrial complex of other countries, focused on the fact that the top priority for world food security was to stop Russia’s war against Ukraine and unblock the export of Ukrainian agricultural products.
According to him, due to the war in Ukraine, world prices for wheat and corn had already increased by more than 20%, which led to an increase in prices for basic food products in all countries of the world. The war unleashed by Russia is especially critical for the countries of Asia and Africa, which import grain mainly from Ukraine and which citizens spend more than 40% of their total costs on food.
The minister stressed that the global food crisis would worsen over time, and every state in the world has already begun to pay the price for Russian aggression in Ukraine due to grain shortages and inflation caused by rising food prices.
“Forecasts of the war impact on global food security, including the FAO forecast, must be adjusted to the above realities in the direction of deterioration. In order to prevent mass starvation, today it is critical to unblock the export of Ukrainian agricultural products,” the Ukrainian minister said.
According to him, in 2022, the future of three crops and the further work of their industry are being decided for Ukrainian farmers.
“Our farmers cannot export last year’s harvest. Secondly, due to the occupation and hostilities, we will harvest only half of this year’s harvest – its export may also be blocked … Thirdly, the next winter sowing campaign is under threat, after all, farmers could not sell their crops and do not have the means to purchase fuel, fertilizers, plant protection products, and they simply have nowhere to store this crop,” Solsky explained.
He recalled that most of this season’s winter wheat was sown in 2021 in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine, where active hostilities are underway and some of which have been captured by Russian troops. The occupiers are actively stealing grain from the temporarily occupied territories, while Ukrainian farmers cannot harvest there, and if they do, they will not be able to sell it.
