Far across the tranquil plains of Eastern Europe, Russia is waging many wars. In addition to a full-blown conflict involving modern weapons with Ukraine, Russia’s ‘War on Grains’ is impacting many low-income and middle-low-income nations across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Before Moscow’s special military operations in Ukraine started in February 2022, Ukraine and Russia used to export nearly 30% of the world’s wheat, 60% of sunflower oil, 20% of corn, 26% of barley and 17% of maize. Those numbers have slumped in recent days.
Since pulling out of the ‘Black Sea Grain Initiative’ in April 2023, Russia has mounted a stringent naval blockade across all of Ukraine’s major grain exporting hubs. Under the blockade, any vessel bound to and from Ukrainian ports is a designated military target and is frequently attacked by the Russian naval forces.
Signed in July 2022 during the early days of the conflict, the ‘Black Sea Grain Initiative’ was an ambitious project by the UN, aimed to increase global food security. Negotiated in close coordination with the UN and Turkey, the initiative mediated between the warring nations of Russia and Ukraine, to resume grain exports that had stagnated due to the conflict.
Negotiated and signed in Istanbul, the agreement allowed cargo ships from both nations to travel through predetermined international maritime trade routes to reach the global markets, passing through multiple Turkish naval inspection points to improve transparency and accountability.
Under the agreement Ukraine had begun exporting grains through three major ports in the Black Sea – Odessa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi (formerly known as Yuzhny), and had shipped nearly 33m tonnes of grain and other agricultural produce until the deal’s termination by Russia.
Russian geopolitical analysts have frequently alleged that the agreement was heavily biased towards Ukraine. The deal enabled Ukraine to ship much of its agricultural produce to international markets while heavy sanctions were placed on Russian grain exports and imports of agricultural machinery and parts.
The economic sanctions by the West on the assets and accounts of Russian companies involved in food and fertiliser exports was another one of the reasons that made Russia rethink its stance in the flawed ‘Black Sea Grain Initiative’, and ultimately Russia decided to pull out of the agreement.
During the early days of Russia’s special military operation in February of 2022, many political analysts likened a butterfly effect on grain and energy exports across all the major grain-importing nations of the world. While the global grain markets initially witnessed many moments of uncertainty, over time, the situation has normalised—at least it appears so on the inside.
Often called the ‘Breadbasket of Europe’, Ukraine’s export operations had faced uncertainty for a brief while before resuming operations once again.
Facing relentless aerial attacks on its export hubs and cargo ships faring the Black Sea maritime corridor, Ukraine has begun shipping grain in much larger volumes through its inland port on the Danube River, the port of Izmail.
By rerouting grain shipments through the Danube Logistics Route, Ukraine has surpassed pre-war export records, increasing shipments every month.
It has also taken up on the EU’s ‘solidarity lanes’ scheme, sending grain shipments by land and barge to ports on the Danube River, or the Romanian port of Constanta, for loading onto cargo ships that travel through the Black Sea, out of Russia’s jurisdiction. Ukraine has also established a new ‘temporary export corridor’ very close to coastal shorelines, where the waters are too shallow for Russian submarines to operate.
Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov has stated that as of September 2024, Ukraine has transported nearly 70mmt (million metric tonnes) of grain to nearly 42 countries like Bangladesh, China, Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Romania, Lebanon, Turkey, Yemen, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti as well as to several other nations.
Despite the resumption of grain exports, experts acknowledge that the Russia-Ukraine war has affected global food security to the point that it is impossible to ship grains from Ukraine without facing increased logistical and maritime challenges. Iran-backed Houthi attacks on maritime vessels crossing the Red Sea further exacerbate the problem and will continue to do so for a long time to come.
While Ukraine’s vast swathes of cultivable land are slowly being rendered useless due to constant bombardments and aerial attacks, Russia has stepped up its grain and energy exports on a war footing, determined to stave off the unfair economic sanctions imposed by Ukraine’s western allies like the EU and the US. With the terrible effects of climate change becoming more apparent, grain may trump oil’s importance in the upcoming future and Russia realises that.
In today’s world, most nations’ strengths are measured by their GDP, their economic stability, and their strength in standing armies. Unlike the few first-world nations that do fit this criterion, several do not make the books.
While larger countries like China and Australia can sustain their annual grain needs by importing, countries like Egypt and Nigeria, despite their geographical and historical importance, are failing to catch up.
According to current estimates by the International Grains Council (IGC), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIC), the global price of grain has lessened in terms of per unit cost measured in USD, but regional prices across the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa suggest that a global catastrophe is in the making.
The world’s hunger risk
Humanity’s war on hunger has been a continued struggle since times immemorial. After billions and millions of years of evolution, hunger, even to this day, remains an issue eternal. Experienced and suffered, hunger has driven man to madness many times in ‘our’ recorded history and continues to do so even to this date and time.
Climate change, an emerging factor in global grain production, has outpaced human estimates vastly since the beginning of the 2000s. Combine that with the morbid effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent global conflicts currently raging in Europe and the Middle East, and a perfect recipe for catastrophe is looming just around the corner for low and middle-low-income nations.
Despite the growth of the human demographic year-on-year (YoY), food production has declined significantly since 2014. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that in 2023, nearly 2.33bn people, or 28.9% of the global population, were moderately or severely food insecure.
Heavily dependent on grain imports, low and middle-low-income nations like Egypt, Indonesia, and Nigeria have failed to manage domestic agriculture to sustain themselves, resulting in them becoming pegs in a $393.84bn global grain market as of 2024. Much of the unsustainability is due to policy changes, water scarcity, pandemics and climate change, but conflicts like the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war worsen the case beyond comprehension.
The tales of those on the receiving end of acute food shortages, scarcity and poverty are beyond understanding, at least for those who have never experienced hunger firsthand. Before the war, Ukraine contributed to over 10% of the world’s grain production, a number that has declined since Russia’s naval blockade across Ukraine’s major ports like Odessa cut off the region from the rest of the world.
Antonina Broyaka, a Ukrainian researcher at Kansas State University’s Agricultural Economics Department, has stated that with every day of the war, thousands of acres of farmlands across Ukraine are slowly losing their crop-producing capabilities. Russia’s slow but relentless attacks against Ukrainian forces across the front are corrupting Ukraine’s post-war economy to the point of no recovery and may result in a total collapse if the conflict extends till 2025.
The revenue and market percentage controlled by Ukraine has since passed to Russian hands, strengthening the nation against the numerous grain and energy export embargoes imposed by the West. Russia has swept up Ukraine’s share of revenue in a bid to bolster and sustain its special military operations in Ukraine.
In addition to hurting Ukraine’s defensive efforts and exacerbating the economic impacts on Ukraine’s post-war stability, the move is also sending shockwaves in vulnerable food security regions across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The Eastern European countries where Ukrainian grain has been unloaded have complained that large shipments of grain have flooded the markets, lowering wholesale prices and affecting the livelihoods of farmers in turn.
Despite the improvement in regional food security and decrease in global grain prices measured in USD, global dependency on grain imports is slowly destabilising the market. It also made its mark when Egypt dropped from the list of major global grain-importing nations at the beginning of 2023.
Despite wheat-based food products making up over 30% of the nation’s diet, the country has become the first among many to lapse in grain imports due to an increase in regional prices despite the drop in the global market. Domestic agriculture efforts in the nation have witnessed an upward incline in recent days, but grain production remains far below desired.
Combined with water scarcity and extreme weather patterns induced by climate change, Egypt is direly in need of international assistance in terms of grains. Larger and more developed nations like Australia and China have however managed to secure large shipments of grain as of FAO’s quarterly estimates for 2024.
This trend in grain import disparity paints a picture of abandonment, where developed nations like China and Australia can afford grain imports despite the fluctuations in global prices, while nations like Egypt are slowly falling down the ranks, unable to cope with the uptick in prices.
Russia steps up to cover Ukraine’s market share
With the massive increase in Russia’s YoY agricultural output for fiscal year 2024, it may appear to some that Russia aims to cover Ukraine’s market share of grain exports while pocketing the change. While it may seem so at first sight, the case may not be so simple.
In addition to generating much-needed revenue for sustaining its war with Ukraine, the control over grain exports also enables Russia to wield a soft power against Ukraine’s western allies, many of whom used to source their grain shipments from Ukraine.
Unlike the US, many western nations still lack domestic agriculture capabilities to sustain themselves, not just in the long run, but also on a short-term basis. This heavy dependence on grain imports enables major grain exporters like Russia to be a key player in the $2.6 trillion market, furthering the diplomatic reach of Moscow.
It is for these very reasons that Russia’s neighbouring nations still dance to Moscow’s tunes, even after decades of independence from the Soviet Union.
It should be noted that in early 2022, Dmitry Medvedev, the former president as well as the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, declared food to be Russia’s “silent weapon”.
By August 2023, President Vladimir Putin had declared Moscow’s intention to ‘replace Ukrainian grain’ with Russian grain, particularly for ‘needy countries’, namely six African nations that have remained allies with Russia throughout the conflict.
On February 21st 2024, Russian Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev informed that Russia has shipped 200,000 metric tonnes of free grain to six African countries as per Putin’s promises. According to the official transcripts from the Kremlin, the shipments included 50,000 tonnes of grains to Somalia and the Central African Republic each, while 25,000 tonnes were shipped to Mali, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe and Eritrea.
Russian state media agency TASS reported Patrushev saying, “The first ship departed on November 7, 2023. The average travel time stood at 30-40 days. The last vessel arrived in Somalia in late January and the unloading of its cargo was completed on February 17.” He added, “This is the first time that our country carried out such a large-scale humanitarian operation.”
African geopolitics analysts have perceived Russia’s move as a strategic investment in Africa, as during Russia’s two-year war with Ukraine, the continent’s worsening food security and unstable market prices have left many nations vulnerable and Russia knows it.
Zimbabwean development economist Godfrey Kanyenze, who is also a founding director of the Labor and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe has said, “It’s strategic in the sense that Russia realises that these countries are in need, and basically takes advantage of that specific need. Africa has become a very critical playing ground.”
He added, “They (Russia) are also riding on the fact that the East were not colonisers. So, they’ve always taken advantage of that historical precedent where the East portrays itself as a non-coloniser and probably a better partner with Africa. So, it’s contestation.”
The FAO estimated that Russia’s YoY wheat exports will likely be a record-high 70mmt for the 2023-24 agricultural year and are projected to increase by as much as 27% by the early 2030s.
Russia’s decision to cut into Ukraine’s share of grain production and exports, will affect nearly 20+ low and middle-low-income nations by 2025, the FAO estimates. As a direct result, nearly 3.4bn people will experience heightened food insecurity and related effects that will only worsen with time.
CSIS’s director Caitlin Welsh, had previously alleged that Russia was using food as a military strategy to ruin Ukraine’s agriculture sector; while not realising the catastrophic changes it will have on global food security.
The statistics remain purely experimental due to the absence of data across scores of low-income nations in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) zones, due largely to major lapses in the FAO’s record-keeping capabilities across the affected regions. Any uptick in food insecurity will have a catastrophic failure across the governments of the world, many of whom will fall in total disarray, destroying their civilians and economy from within.
Russia corners global grain market, US levies sanctions
Russia’s special military operations may have retriggered a brutal conflict on the soil of Europe nearly 77 years after the last global conflict, and in the long run, any significant impact on the global grain and energy markets will be Russia’s doing. But the US is also to be blamed.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had previously called out Russia for its devastating impacts on global food security due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine but failed to mention the US’s complicity in the ordeal. By supplying weapons and equipment to Ukraine and imposing indirect financial constraints on Russia through NATO, the EU, and the UN, the US has also expressed trends that indicate that they are not in any hurry to solve the problem.
Despite being proclaimed a global superpower, the US has not directly intervened in Russia’s war with Ukraine. Instead, the US has chosen to stand along the sidelines, watching Ukraine fight for a proxy war on its behalf, using the most sophisticated military equipment supplied by the West.
As Russia corners the global grain market in rapid strides, a peaceful resolution of the conflict will arise not just from the cooperation of the warring nations of Russia and Ukraine, but also from international players like the US and its western allies like the UK and Germany, who have much to say in the matter, if their differences are put aside.
Unless first-world nations step up to prevent the worsening global food security situation, only the rich countries will continue to exist on this earth, in the years to come.
