UN World Food Program
WFP: Millions of tons of grain blocked in Ukraine
A combine harvester is threshing rye in a field. Because Russia is blocking Ukraine’s sea routes, important grain shipments cannot leave the country. Photo: Patrick Pleul/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The war in Ukraine also affects the global supply of grain. According to the World Food Program, several million tons are in ports and on ships, but they cannot leave the country.
Millions of tons of urgently needed food in Ukraine cannot be used at the moment.
“Currently almost 4.5 million tons of grain are stuck in Ukrainian ports and on ships and cannot be used,” said the director of the World Food Program of the United Nations (WFP) in Germany, Martin Frick, the German Press Agency. There are currently problems with the export of food, among other things, because ports and sea routes are blocked in the course of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
Until the beginning of the war, Ukraine was one of the world’s most important producers of wheat and a major producer of corn. According to UN figures, for example, a good 30 million tons of maize and almost 25 million tons of wheat were harvested in the country in 2020. Many countries, for example in North Africa, are dependent on cheap wheat from Ukraine. The grain is also crucial for global food aid. “Food from Ukraine is urgently needed around the world,” says Frick.
According to the WFP, the organization has provided food aid to around 2.5 million Ukrainians since the war began – most of them in Ukraine itself and a few hundred thousand in Moldova. There is a double challenge: “Food must get to the trapped and needy people in Ukraine, but also out of the region into the world in order to defuse a global food crisis,” said Frick.
The WFP needs humanitarian access, both to people and to ports, so that food exports can restart. “Hunger must not be a weapon, that applies both militarily and economically.”