Ukraine is on track to ship almost as much grain this month as it did before the Russian invasion, a triumph for international efforts to alleviate food shortages, a US official said Tuesday.
Ukraine is one of the world’s top exporters of wheat, corn, barley and sunflower oil, and before the war shipped around five million tons of grain every month.
Its exports collapsed after the February 24 invasion, contributing to a spike in global food prices that has hit poor countries particularly hard.
“Thanks to intensive international cooperation, Ukraine is on track to export up to four million tons of agricultural products in August,” a senior US State Department official told AFP.
Ukraine and Russia, brokered by Turkey and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, reached an initial war deal in July with guarantees for ships to sail from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
The State Department official said the effort has seen more than 720,000 tons of grain shipped out of the ports by 33 ships in recent weeks.
So far, a European initiative to ship Ukrainian grain by river, rail and road has been more important.
The so-called “solidarity lanes” set up by the European Union brought additional vehicles, including trucks, to the border and overcame hurdles including the incompatibility of Ukrainian carriages with European rail lanes.
The European effort is shipping 2.5 to 3 million tons of products to the European Union and beyond to international markets every month, the official said.
Under the deal negotiated in Istanbul, Russia will also be guaranteed the supply of food and fertilizer without sanctions.
Guterres recently called for “unhindered access” and said the world could face dangerous agricultural shortages next year if Russian fertilizer doesn’t reach international markets.
The United States says its sweeping sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine war have exempted agricultural products and accuses Moscow of trying to distract the world from its own responsibility for the shortages.
Last week, the United States announced it was contributing an additional $68 million to the World Food Program to buy 150,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat to help combat food insecurity.
The UN agency warned on Friday that around 22 million people are at risk of starvation in the Horn of Africa countries, where the rising cost of imported food has exacerbated the effects of climate change.
Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia have all suffered an unprecedented loss of four rainy seasons in a row.
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