LONDON (AP) — The amount of grain leaving Ukraine has plummeted even as a UN-brokered deal keeps food flowing to developing countries, with ship inspections cut in half by compared to four months ago and a growing backlog of ships as Russia’s invasion nears the one-year mark.
Ukrainian and American officials accuse Russia of slowing down inspections, which Moscow has denied. Less wheat, barley and other grains flowing out of Ukraine, dubbed the “breadbasket of the world”, raises concerns about the impact on those suffering from hunger in Africa, the Middle East and in parts of Asia – places that depend on affordable food supplies from the Black Sea region.
The hurdles come as separate agreements brokered last summer by Turkey and the UN to maintain supplies from warring countries and reduce soaring food prices are up for renewal next month. Russia is also one of the world’s top suppliers of wheat, other grains, sunflower oil and fertilizers, and officials have complained about delays in shipping vital crop nutrients.
Under the deal, food exports from three Ukrainian ports rose from 3.7 million metric tons in December to 3 million in January, according to the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul. This is where inspection teams from Russia, Ukraine, the UN and Turkey ensure that ships are carrying only agricultural products and no weapons.
The drop in supply is equivalent to about one month of food consumption for Kenya and Somalia combined. This follows the average drop in inspections per day to 5.7 last month and 6 so far this month, from the peak of 10.6 in October.
SHOW: Famine threatens Somalia as drought and civil war displace millions
This has helped reduce the number of vessels waiting in waters off Turkey to be screened or join the Black Sea Grain Initiative. There are 152 ships online, the JCC said, an increase of 50% from January.
This month, ships are waiting an average of 28 days between application for participation and inspection, said Ruslan Sakhautdinov, head of the Ukrainian delegation to the CCM. This is one week more than in January.
Factors such as bad weather hampering the work of inspectors, demand from shippers to join the initiative, port activity and vessel capacity also affect shipments.
“I think it will become a problem if inspections continue to be this slow,” said William Osnato, senior research analyst at agricultural data and analytics firm Gro Intelligence. “In a month or two you’ll realize that a few million tonnes haven’t come out because it’s going too slow.”
“By creating the bottleneck, you create a kind of flow gap, but as long as they come out of it, it’s not a total disaster,” he added.
US officials such as USAID Administrator Samantha Power and US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield blamed Russia for the slowdown, saying food supplies to vulnerable countries were being delayed.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Facebook on Wednesday that Russian inspectors have been “systematically delaying ship inspections” for months.
They accused Moscow of obstructing work under the deal and then “taking advantage of the opportunity for uninterrupted commercial shipping from Russian Black Sea ports.”
Osnato also raised the possibility of Russia slowing down inspections “in order to pick up more business” after harvesting a large wheat crop. Figures from financial data provider Refinitiv show Russian wheat exports more than doubled to 3.8 million tonnes last month from January 2022, before the invasion.
According to Refinitiv, Russian wheat shipments hit or near record highs in November, December and January, rising 24% from the same three months a year earlier. He estimated that Russia will export 44 million tons of wheat in 2022-2023.
Alexander Pchelyakov, spokesman for Russia’s diplomatic mission to the UN agencies in Geneva, said last month that allegations of deliberate slowdowns were “simply untrue”.
Russian officials have also complained that the country’s fertilizers are not exported under the deal, leaving the renewal of the four-month deal that expires on March 18 in question.
Without tangible results, the extension of the agreement is “unreasonable”, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin told RTVI, a private Russian-language television channel, on Monday.
UN officials say they have been working to get Russian fertilizer off the ground and have expressed hope that the deal will be extended.
“I think we’re in a bit more difficult territory at the moment, but the fact is that I think it will be conclusive and convincing,” Martin Griffiths, the UN’s under-secretary-general for affairs, told reporters on Wednesday. humanitarians. “The Global South and international food security need this operation to continue.”
Tolulope Phillips, a bakery manager in Lagos, Nigeria, has seen the impact firsthand. He says the price of flour has skyrocketed by 136% since the start of the war in Ukraine. Nigeria, a major importer of Russian wheat, has seen prices for bread and other foods rise.
LEARN MORE: 1 year after the start of the invasion, a timeline of Russia’s war in Ukraine
“It’s generally unstable for the survival of any business,” Phillips said. “You have to set your prices to reflect that increase, and it doesn’t just affect flour – it affects sugar, it affects flavors, it affects the price of diesel, it affects the price of electricity. So , the cost of production generally increased.
Global food prices, including for wheat, have returned to pre-war levels in Ukraine after reaching record highs in 2022. In emerging economies that depend on imported food, such as Nigeria, weakening currencies keep prices high because they pay in dollars, Osnato said.
Additionally, the droughts that affected crops from the Americas to the Middle East meant that food was already expensive before Russia invaded Ukraine and exacerbated the food crisis, Osnato said.
Prices will likely remain high for more than a year, he said. What is needed now is “good weather and a few harvest seasons to feel more comfortable with global supplies for a number of different grains” and “to see a significant drop in food prices worldwide”.
AP journalists Dan Ikpoyi in Lagos, Nigeria, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.
gb7
Don’t miss interesting posts on Famousbio
