Markets await grain from Ukraine

Food is taking a bigger bite out of family budgets among the woes of inflation the world over. It is well known that runaway inflation is hitting the very items consumers need most and hardest.

But the bit of good news is that the opening of exports of grain stagnating over months in Ukrainian silos at Odesa in the Black Sea, will start moving from next week according to reliable sources.                                                                

Restarting grain exports from the Black Sea ports of Ukraine under a deal signed by Moscow and Kyiv on 22 July 2022 aimed at easing global food shortages was negotiated by Turkey with the assistance of the UN Secretary General,Antonio Guterres. It was hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough to restore at least 5 million tonnes a month, twelve times (60 million tonnes) more exports which was available before the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022.

Some 80 ships remain blocked in Ukraine's Black Sea due to evacuation of crew members. This means more mariners are needed in the region to get the cargoes of grain moving.The main concern at the moment is both security of crew members as well of ships. Shipowners seem reluctant to put their ships for these cargoes, due to fear of sea mines. Until national navies assist the Ukrainians authorities to "sweep the mines" and create a safe corridor, ships and shipowners face significant risks sailing through the treacherous stretches of water, 

                                     

 Food Politics involved in invasion

Understanding food politics requires combining many approaches, which in my layman’s opinion, all to do with the “theories of power”.

Food production, consumption and nutrition all illustrate knowledge and power, highlighting distribution, diversity and even democracy.

Food has become both interdependent with equitable development, capturing high level

attention in international policy debates. Food incorporates questions of economy. 

There are varying views that Russia used the “policies of food” in the conquest of Ukraine.

There are also people who maintain that Ukraine is Russia. When I visited Ukraine from

Russia in the winter of 1962, I was never told that. What then has changed in the mind-set of the powers in Russia within these sixty odd years? 

We have seen during these sixty years that whilst Ukraine worked its “balls” to achieve its present status, many were afraid, it would one day, be a great and resilient economy. Was

It fear, that led to the invasion of Ukraine?

Malthusian concerns

Malthusian concerns of feeding the growing populations dominated our Colonial and Post War development and structured many world policy approaches, from agriculture to environment, population control and trade.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) since 2015 have come to dominate policy with Agenda 2030, the date committed to eradicating hunger and poverty, securing healthy lives and decent working conditions for all. 

All of a sudden what one set of men dispose, another set of minds destroy, all for the sake of power.

What the invasion of Ukraine has done, it has obliterated the “SDG’s” at one stroke and made the world a hungry place.

What is for sure, man is ingenious and it would not be very long when a fresh set of minds will come out with “out of the box values for humanity to survive”. 

Till that time comes, I am reminded of a Ukrainian mother with her two young girls coming to take refuge in London some months ago. 

According to The Guardian (London) and I quote: 

“When Russian tanks rolled into the Ukrainian city of Kherson, Olha fled with her children…… They travelled across the Polish Border thro Germany and Sweden before arriving in London. Now she faces yet another challenge: bureaucracy…………”  

I asked myself, what did she expect?  She says: “the world is grey, she says she has become more frustrated with forced idleness.” She blames it on the existential struggle against a new, but familiar “Russian Imperialism”. 

I asked myself, was this caused by the fields and hectares of grain harvests? 

Victor Cherubim