As the Russian invasion hits Ukraine’s production of wheat, corn and other key exports, Cindy McCain, the US Ambassador to the United Nations for Food and Agriculture, warned Monday that millions in the Middle East and Africa will soon be on the brink of starvation could stand .
“Putin’s war is forcing us to take from the hungry to feed the starving,” McCain said Monday on C-SPAN. “Rising prices are forcing tough decisions to cut rations in some of the world’s most desperate humanitarian crises, including Afghanistan and Yemen.”
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that up to 13 million people worldwide could be food insecure as a result of February’s invasion. More than 50 countries depend on Russia and Ukraine to produce about 30 percent of their wheat supply.
Ukraine is also a key wheat supplier to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which feeds 138 million people in more than 80 countries, including four “hunger hotspots”: Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.
“Russia is bombing one of the biggest breadbaskets in the world,” McCain said of Ukraine. “This war will further exacerbate global food insecurity by affecting the upcoming planting season and the movement of food within the country.”
The WFP estimates that Ukraine’s grain supply feeds 400 million people in a typical year, but that number is set to fall sharply because of the war, the US Department of Agriculture has warned.
According to estimates by the Ministry of Agriculture, Russia is likely to increase its annual wheat exports by 1 million tons, while Ukraine is likely to decrease its wheat exports by the same amount. With the country’s Black Sea ports closed, some Ukrainian farmers may be growing crops better suited for local consumption than export.
dr Jim Barnhart, assistant administrator at the US Agency for International Development’s Office of Resilience and Food Security, told reporters Tuesday that global food insecurity was a looming crisis long before Russia invaded Ukraine.
The war has exacerbated existing roadblocks in the food supply chain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing humanitarian crises and global fertilizer price hikes. Barnhart, who recently returned from Senegal and Niger, warned that “food riots” broke out in at least 14 African countries during the last global food crisis of 2007-2008.
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“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Barnhart said. “Experience has shown that $1 invested in resilience efforts can later save up to $3 in humanitarian aid. So all of this helps to ensure that major shocks such as COVID-19, climate change and conflict do not leave families falling behind in poverty and malnutrition.”
McCain said the United Nations aims to “feed more with less” by providing vulnerable populations with the most nutritious foods. Infants and children are the first to be hit by most humanitarian crises, she noted, adding that WFP is distributing packets of high-protein food paste to support babies in famine regions.
“These are nutrients that we take for granted here in the United States because our children get them naturally,” McCain said. “These children cannot survive on wheat and grain alone.”