RUSSIA IS WEAPONISING FOOD SUPPLIES WHICH WILL CAUSE GLOBAL CHAOS

'If we do not feed people, we feed conflict', Antonio Guterres said, urging Russia to release Ukrainian grain exports.

- JOHN DOBSON

Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, many in the world were starving. Global food prices have been on the rise since mid-2020 and are now at an all-time high. Skyrocketing demand coupled with drought in key producing regions of the world, such as South America and the Black Sea, created a perfect storm for commodity prices to spike. And then came the invasion, which only escalated the tight supply-led price rally to an entirely new level. Russia and Ukraine command a significant portion of global agriculture trade flow, especially for wheat and sunflower oil, and the ongoing war will seriously cut supply, create an upsurge in prices and increase the numbers dying of starvation.

In normal times, Ukraine is an agricultural superpower. The country has around 42 million hectares of rich agricultural land, coated in so-called "black soil" (chernozem) containing humus and variety of micro elements, making it the most fertile soil in the world. Only about 2% of the world's soil is chernozem and about 25% of that is found in Ukraine, which explains why Joseph Stalin considered the country to be the "breadbasket of the Soviet Union". There's a certain irony in that almost a century ago, Stalin sent his commissioners and troops to Ukraine to "expropriate" (steal) the grain which he claimed was hoarded by Ukrainian farmers, causing about five million deaths from starvation. Today, Ukrainian farmers are again being killed and their barns and stores "expropriated" by troops sent by Stalin's protégé, Vladimir Putin. In the past three months, Russian soldiers have destroyed civilian districts, smashed public infrastructure, stolen farm equipment, shelled food storage sites and stolen thousands of tonnes of grain.