War on food soil | The class struggle
HUNGER: Russia’s advance to the east deprives Ukraine of access to large agricultural areas and central export ports. The consequences are brutal, both for the Ukrainians and for global food security.
In several places in Ukraine, farmers have had to drop the spring ounce because Russian forces have laid out landmines, reports the news agency AP. This is probably a problem that affects food production in the country which has some of the world’s most fertile agricultural areas.
“Ukraine is a country with 40 million people, producing to 400 million people,” writes Anne Poulsen, director of the World Food Programs’ (WFP) Nordic office in Copenhagen, in an e-mail to Klassekampen.
Ukraine produces half of the wheat WFP buys, and Poulsen points out that the war has affected global food prices dramatically.
“Even before the conflict in Ukraine, we saw that the food price index for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) rose to a record high in March this year,” writes Poulsen.
Hitting hard ashore in the south
The FAO warned in March that the war in Ukraine was sending shock waves through the food markets. Ukraine was the world’s largest exporter of wheat, with 10 percent of the market in 2021. They were also major exporters of wheat, construction, rapeseed and sunflower seeds and oil.
Rising food prices will also affect Western consumers, but first the country is in the south, which buys large quantities from Russia and Ukraine.
“Rising food prices are particularly alarming for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide, in countries such as Afghanistan, South Sudan and Yemen, which are already on the brink of a serious food crisis,” Poulsen writes, pointing out that in such countries an increase in food prices of 1 or 2 percent can mean differences between life and death.
“Even before Ukraine, the humanitarian situation was worse than ever since World War II,” she points out.
Many countries in the south are affected by drought, extreme weather and the effects of man-made climate change. On top of this comes the corona pandemic, economic crises and record high food prices.
“In just one year, it has a critical result from 135 million to 276 million. And that was before the conflict in Ukraine broke out. If the conflict bans goods in April this year, it is feared that being critically hungry will increase by another 47 », Poulsen writes.
Losing agricultural land
Following a failed offensive against Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Russia has in recent weeks concentrated on an offensive in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass region. The region consists of the counties of Donetsk and Luhansk. Parts of these have since 2014 been controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
The news site Al Jazeera writes that Russia’s offensive in the east seems to aim to occupy the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, and such ensure a cohesive Russian-controlled area that also includes Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Al Jazeera has analyzed data collected by the US Department of Agriculture and writes if Ukraine loses this area, they lose 23 percent of its agricultural production.
The breakaway counties of Donetsk and Luhansk account for 8 percent of Ukraine’s total agricultural production, estimates UN economist Monika Tothova to Al Jazeera. She says that most vegetables are grown for domestic consumption there, and not food for export.
A lasting Russian occupation will still affect the country’s entire agricultural landscape, because farmers elsewhere in the country will have to compensate by shifting from production to export to vegetable production to their own inhabitants.
Tothova points out that further production also presupposes that Ukrainian farmers can provide fuel for agricultural machinery and trucks for transport.
It could be a challenge: So far, they have imported diesel from Belarus and Russia.
Fertilizer prices to heaven
Fertilizer can also be a problem. NTB reported yesterday that the Ukraine war is pushing up the prices of fertilizers worldwide. Until now, Russia has been one of the world’s largest fertilizer exporters.
The war has led to sky-high prices for natural gas – which is used in the production of artificial fertilizers.
The consequences are felt globally: According to NTB, a farmer in Kenya says that the price of the fertilizer she needs has increased fivefold.
Al Jazeera writes in areas east of Ukraine include some of the world’s most fertile soil, called black soil. This soil needs less fertilizer and the soil in other parts of the country.
Analysts wonder above Al Jazeera whether a desire to gain access to this valuable natural resource may have been a factor behind Russia’s decision to invade.
Sea transport is affected
Not only agricultural production, but also Ukraine’s ability to export by sea, is affected by the war.
On Thursday, Russia claimed to have captured the port cities of Mariupol on the Azov Sea and Kherson on the Black Sea.
Mariupol is the largest city in the Donbass. The industrial city is also the largest port city on the Azov Sea and important for the export of grain, iron and steel.
There were still tough fights in Mariupol yesterday. The UN called for a halt to the fighting, so that the civilian population, estimated at 100,000, can be evacuated.
The port city of Odesa on the Black Sea was under heavy rocket attack by Russian forces this weekend. According to Al Jazeera, the attacks on the city have led to civilian cargo vessels reluctant to call at the port.
UN economist Tothova tells Al Jazeera that 90 percent of merchandise exports from Ukraine went through the ports of the Azov Sea and the Black Sea before the war.
– Enough food, need money
From Copenhagen, Anne Poulsen maintains that it is enough in the world to satiate everyone, even though the Ukraine war means a break in the supply lines from the Black Sea region.
“It is the approach to food that is a challenge. That is why it is important to keep marked open, avoid hoarding and external and unjustified export restrictions, make reserves available to countries with the greatest risk of hunger and famine, ”she writes.
Organizations like WFP need enough money in the short term to continue saving lives.
“This applies not only to Ukraine, but also to the other hotspots we work on. Yemen, South Sudan, Afghanistan. It is also important with the political press so that we are ensured a humanitarian approach “, she writes.