Ukraine’s grain exports fell by half in August compared with a year earlier, and prices abroad were already climbing. That was the figure Ugo Astuto, the European Union’s ambassador to South Korea, put at the centre of an op-ed in Yonhap News Agency on Tuesday, September 22.
Astuto argued that the war is choking the flow of Ukrainian grain to the world, and he asked for a “full and unconditional ceasefire.” Russia, he wrote, is “choking off Ukraine’s options for transport of grain across the Black Sea, the Danube River and overland corridors.” He listed the targets: commercial shipping, ports, inland logistics, warehouses and farm infrastructure. The people at risk, in his words, are “millions of people across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.”
Storage and the next planting
The ambassador expects things to get worse. By November, more than 9 million tonnes of grain, oilseeds and meals could be left without storage space. Farmers who cannot sell what they have grown will run short of cash for the next sowing, and that would cut supply further.
“This matters in a world where an estimated 645 million people face hunger,” he wrote. The most vulnerable countries and communities, he added, are the least able to take another shock to food prices and supplies.
What Ukraine used to supply
North Africa and the Middle East have long leaned on Ukrainian farms. Before the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Astuto said, Ukraine accounted for 15 percent of global corn exports, 10 percent of wheat, between 15 and 20 percent of barley and half of all sunflower oil.
The EU has backed alternative routes, the Solidarity Lanes, since May 2022. They are not enough, Astuto said. The Black Sea carries about 90 percent of Ukraine’s agricultural exports. “These measures can only mitigate the consequences. They cannot substitute for safe navigation in the Black Sea.”
His proposal is a moratorium on attacks on grain export facilities, infrastructure and shipping in the Black Sea, plus international pressure on Russia to accept a ceasefire and enter peace talks. “The international community should not allow access to food to become another weapon of war,” he wrote, adding that Ukraine has shown it is ready for a just and lasting peace, starting with a ceasefire.
