Ukraine’s grain deal halt and how to truly help developing countries - OPED

To be clear, the interruption of Ukrainian grain exports is indeed bad news. Without the 725,000 tons of grain, which is about 2 percent of the 33 million tons of total exports, that the World Food Program shipped out of Ukraine last year, the poorest countries would be even worse off. However, the 53,500 tons received by Somalia and the 95,000 tons for Sudan (0.16 and 0.28 percent of the total, respectively) are in stark contrast to the amount of grain received by countries like the Netherlands and Spain (1.95 and 6 million tons, respectively) for example, grain that was destined primarily for the European feed industry. The termination of the grain deal is thus bad news for European consumers of meat and dairy rather than for hungry East Africans. This raises two pressing questions. First, how come that after a year, so little of the exported food has reached the places of greatest need, despite earlier UN promises?

The answer is that food destined for the world market, even before it has been planted and harvested, has already been traded and sold to the highest bidder. Poorer countries and the United Nations World Food Program may join the back of the queue. In addition, emergency relief agencies like the World Food Program are desperately short of funds to meet the growing need, the greater demand for food. Rich donor countries like the Netherlands should provide funding much more generously to address acute hunger. The option exists to give the World Food Program a preferential position in the international grain market during acute famines, but that would require global coordination, which does not seem very realistic given the political reluctance of rich countries in particular.