AGRICULTURE
Ukraine conflict prompts countries to hoard
grain, endangering global food supply
U.S. officials warn that restricting food exports in
the wake of Russia’s Ukraine invasion is exacerbating a global food crisis.
By MEREDITH
LEE
03/12/2022
07:00 AM EST
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/12/ukraine-grain-food-supply-00016764
Panic
buying is back. But instead of individual consumers cleaning out store shelves
of toilet paper, as they did in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the
culprits now are national governments, who are hoarding food supplies in the
wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
And U.S.
officials are warning that such behavior could prove catastrophic for the
global food supply, which is still recovering from the pandemic’s effects.
Russia and
Ukraine together provide about 30 percent of the world’s wheat. But since
Russian forces launched an invasion of their neighbor in late February, ports
and supply routes have been shuttered and sanctions have blocked Russian
exports to many of the world’s major economies.
That’s
prompted governments across Europe, Africa and the Middle East to scramble for
a new source of nutrition for millions of people. To make matters worse, many
of the countries who could help fill those voids — including Hungary, Argentina
and Turkey — have placed restrictions on exports of key food products, arguing
they need to keep enough supply for their own populations. China has also
signaled it will likely hold back on rice exports, another major source of
global nutrition, as food insecurity grows.
Beijing
already holds half of the world’s wheat supply in storage and its panic buying
is further driving up prices.
“It’s like
pandemic hoarding, but it’s not toilet paper, it’s millions of bushels of grain
that normally feed large portions of the world,” said a Biden administration
official. “Countries are instead sitting on those supplies because they aren’t
sure when this will end.”
After the
wheat market reached an all-time high earlier this week, U.S. Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack and agricultural ministers from six other major economies
warned on Friday that countries refusing to export food products would only
drive further price spikes, saying it “could threaten food security and
nutrition at a global scale, especially among the most vulnerable.”
The G-7
officials, who met virtually to discuss Ukraine, called on countries to keep
their food and agricultural markets open and “to guard against any unjustified
restrictive measures on their exports.”
Vilsack
said later that Ukrainian Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Roman Leshchenko
spoke to the group from a bunker and asked the countries to provide fuel to
help Ukrainian farmers harvest and plant new crops this spring, as the nation
faces a rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis.
Leshchenko’s
request for help came just as the United Nations released a report Friday that
estimated international food and feed prices could rise by as much as 20
percent as a result of the conflict. U.S. lawmakers and officials tracking the
situation are especially worried about shortages and price spikes unleashing
social unrest in countries across Africa and the Middle East.
The U.S., a
major grain exporter, will likely be insulated from the worst of the price
spikes, said Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of
Illinois.
“The
concern is mainly consumers in poorer countries getting priced out of the
market and the human cost of that,” Irwin said.
U.S.
officials have been tracking China’s moves in the wake of the conflict and are
wary that Beijing is positioning itself to use its mass reserves as a political
cudgel against countries in Africa and the Middle East who will be in
increasingly desperate need for food supplies as the conflict continues.“The
biggest question is whether Beijing is doing this just because it’s worried
about securing enough food for its own population, or if it has plans beyond
that,” the Biden official said
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário