The elusive peace between Russia y Ukraine It goes through a trial by fire. Starting this weekend, an agreement began to take effect to cease attacks in the Black Sea, so that Russian frigates let Ukrainian ships through that will try to remove 22 million tons of grain stuck by the bombingsnipers and mines.
And although this Saturday the city of Odessa woke up amid missiles Russians that fell into its commercial port, if the agreement comes to fruition, fears of a global food shortage – which would be felt more in Africa and Europe – as the aftermath of the conflict in Eastern Europe, will allay.
However, the boats will have to leave against time because they will only be given 120 days to clear the warehouses full of food, despite the fact that the pact has been broken with the bombing of Odessa.
In fact, even with that scenario, there is another question in limbo, because Russia would have been looting crops from areas that its troops occupied with the invasion. The Kremlin itself confirmed that a ship sailed from the port of Berdyansk with 7,000 tons of cultivated cereals by Ukrainians, but which are now in Russian hands.
That communication from the Vladimir Putin regime arrived a week ago and turned out to be the confirmation of an open secret that had been whispered since the beginning of the military incursion on February 24. In addition to this ideological dispute against the West, the frictions with the I’LL TAKE and the harshness due to the intentions of Volodymyr Zelensky to join that Alliance and the European Union, food is another ingredient in the cocktail of these 155 days of war.
And it is that Ukraine and Russia have been the agricultural pantries of Europe. Of the first, 32 million hectares correspond to arable land and the figures for international food trade bear this out. For example, the FAO numbers show that even before the war the 18% of corn exports in the world came from that territory, equivalent to 14 million tons; 10% of the wheat exports – that is, some 20 million tons – also came from this sector.
The accounts continue if sunflower crops are taken into account, a market that is covered by 78% by seeds that come from Russia and Ukraine, and which are the basis for the generation of oils. What’s more: 50 countries depend on these two nations to cover at least 30% of their wheat import needs, as the FAO made clear in a document published in June on the risks of a famine due to war.
The recipe of the Ukrainian agricultural pantry is completed with the barley, rapeseed and soybean crops that come out of there, in addition to the production of fertilizers for the global market that they buy from Europeans like Germany and France – where there are already protests by farmers – to Latin Americans like Colombia.
lock on the seas
But the war meant that much of those grains and chemicals for crops to take root in other parts of the world got stuck when Russia fenced Ukraine’s trade routes.
Before, the country could take its products through the route that connects the Sea of Azov, the Kerch Strait and the Black Sea, but with the deployment of troops, these crossings were blocked by Russian frigates, leaving only the land option –by train and truck through Poland or Slovakia – and three ports close to Romania to get the crops out.
While the outlet to trade from Europe has been limited, the ground is fertile for the crops to reach Russia through the occupied territories, as shown by an investigation by the BBC, which through satellite images and contact with 200 Ukrainian farmers decided that the grains harvested in Ukraine were being taken by soldiers to Russia through Donbasthe region where the invasion began.
Precisely, the Russian troops were located, in part, where there are farms. It was the regions of Vinnitsa, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Kherson and Kharkov that had half of the 2020 wheat production and all of that list has been bombed or occupied.
Likewise, those of Zhitómir, kyiv, Poltava, Sumi, Khmelnitski, Cherkasi and Cherníhiv were the epicenter of 70% of the corn harvests and are also under siege. The perimeter over the agricultural cities extends to the most important of the sunflower seed marketfrom where before the war 60% of those grains were shipped, a catalog in which the names of agricultural regions are repeated: Cherníhiv, Kharkov, Sumi, Poltava, Mikoláiv, Lugansk, Kirovogrado, Zaporiyia, Dnipropetrovsk and Vinnitsa.
The issue of the Russian blockade of the international food market goes beyond crops and also touches that of fertilizers, in which Ukraine is the global leader.
The basic input to produce them is gas, a hydrocarbon whose price on the stock markets rose from February to reach a maximum peak in June and has not returned to its average levels. Even in these 155 days of war There was also talk that Russia could cut off gas supplies to Europe and, with this, block the handle of another geopolitical door: that of global energy supply.