The attack on the “breadbasket of Europe” threatens vulnerable countries
There are only two places in the world that have a precious resource, the chornozem, in Ukrainian “the black earth”, a type of land rich in humus, potassium and phosphorous: a strip of land in Canada and another that includes northeastern Ukraine and part of Russia, according to the world reference base of the resources of the soil (WRB). Ukraine alone is home to a quarter of the world’s extension of this type of fertile land, which covers a good part of 70% of its national territory, 42 million hectares -out of a total of more than 600,000 square kilometers- destined for crops agricultural, fundamentally cereals, among which wheat stands out.
Considered “the granary of Europe”, in 2020, Ukraine exported 18 million tons of wheat and became the world’s fifth largest supplier of this cereal. It is also one of the main exporters of corn and sunflower oil. And, according to official Ukrainian data, 40% of these exports are destined for countries in the Maghreb, the Near and Middle East and Africa, some of which are highly dependent on grain imports. States like Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya produce less than half of the wheat that their inhabitants consume each year.
According to data from the World Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), countries as vulnerable as Yemen and Libya, mired in two armed conflicts, imported 22% and 43% respectively of the wheat they consume in 2020 from Ukraine; Lebanon, immersed in a very serious economic crisis, 50%, while Egypt, considered the world’s leading importer of wheat, bought 14% of that cereal from the former Soviet republic. Studies by international organizations, including the FAO, show that the population with fewer resources in developing countries obtains a good part of the calories in their diet – up to 35% – from bread and flour-based products, like pasta.
The impact of a protracted war on the production and export of cereals, especially wheat, in Ukraine, could be very pronounced, especially since the cereal areas are mainly located in the center and the eastern half of the country, where producing the Russian military operation. If the Russian Armed Forces were to take control of the Black Sea ports, through which the bulk of Ukraine’s grain exports transit, the outlook could be even bleaker and have devastating consequences not only for the Ukrainian economy, but for the vulnerable countries dependent on grain imports from that country.
A halt or drastic reduction in grain exports by Ukraine would almost certainly result in higher prices for bread and other grain-based products, a particularly serious prospect for countries such as Yemen, in where there are 16 million people at risk of hunger, according to the United Nations. In other States, such as Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan, the rise in food prices has been in the past at the origin of successive social explosions, in the 80s and 90s, baptized precisely as “the bread riots”. (THE COUNTRY).
