“The farmers, the agriculture workers went to war and continue to fight in the war, and some of their vehicles went to the war,” says the Ukrainian agriculture minister, Mykola Solsky.
With swaths of farmland turning into battlefields and Ukraine’s road and port infrastructure being attacked by Russian missiles and bombs, the country’s food supply chain has seized up. “There are limitations on working hours because of curfews, and there are limits on the movement of agricultural equipment because of controls on the roads,” Solsky says.
The damage to Ukraine’s road network and food distribution infrastructure has made getting food to areas suddenly hosting millions of internally displaced people difficult. The World Food Programme estimates that 45 per cent of the population is worried about finding enough to eat.
But the war has also left a global supply gap. Ukraine accounts for 8 per cent of global wheat exports, 13 per cent of corn flows, and more than one third of the sunflower oil trade. Normally the country exports 40mn to 50mn tonnes of cereals every year, but Russia’s invasion has meant export volumes in March were a quarter of those in February, according to the agriculture ministry.
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