Ukraine war threaten global food supply, UN official warns

AP , Monday 14 Mar 2022

Russia's war against Ukraine is threatening the global food supply and putting developing countries, especially the world's poorest, at risk, the United Nations chief and the head of the UN food agency warned on Monday.

Men cook a meal in a street in Mariupol, Ukraine, Sunday, March 13, 2022. The surrounded southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest human suffering, remained cut off despite earlier talks on creating aid or evacuation convoys. AP

More than 40 African and least-developed countries import at least one-third of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia, and 18 of them import at least 50%, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.

These countries include Egypt, Congo, Burkina Faso, Leban, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, he said.

``All of this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe,'' the secretary-general warned.

David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, told The Associated Press during a visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv that 50% of the grain the program buys to feed ``the 125 million people we reach on any given day, week or month'' comes from Ukraine, as does 20% of the world's supply of corn.

``So (the war) is going to have a dynamic global catastrophic impact,'' Beasley said.

Guterres announced an additional $40 million from the UN's emergency fund to get critical supplies of food, water, and medicine into Ukraine, where at least 1.9 million people are displaced.