A Global Famine Is Still an Avoidable Disaster
Putin’s desire to maintain Russia’s status as a leading grain exporter gives the U.S. and its allies leverage to try to restore Ukraine’s unhindered access to global commodity markets.
A complicated harvest.
Photographer: Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images)
The EU and the US accuse Russia of creating a global food crisis with its Ukraine invasion. Yale history professor Timothy Snyder even finds ominous historical parallels between the current goings-on and the famine in Ukraine — and parts of Russia — caused by the Bolshevik collectivization in the early 1930s. “Putin has a hunger plan,” Snyder recently tweeted.
The invasion has certainly delivered a series of shocks to global commodity markets that have threatened the food security of the most vulnerable countries, especially African ones. These shocks, however, appear to have more to do with energy prices and freight insurance rates than with the disruption of Ukrainian agricultural exports — which Ukraine does its best to maintain despite near-impossible conditions. And if Putin does have a “hunger plan,” he recently shot himself in the foot by lowering Russia’s grain export duties. That move and forecasts of a bumper harvest in a number of countries have been driving wheat prices down; it’s likely that an acute food crisis will be avoided this year and next.
To try to shed some light on what’s been going on, I’ll use the example of wheat, probably the world’s most important food crop, of which both Russia and Ukraine are major exporters.