"For South Asian countries, which is the home of 50% of the world population, Ukraine is the main supplier of food grains. China, with the largest population in the world, depends on Ukraine for 32% of its corn. With the world’s second-largest population, India imports 31% of its sunflower from Ukraine. Egypt, Iran and Türkiye also depend on Ukraine’s corn exports. In a similar way, Moldova, Lebanon, Qatar, Tunisia, Libya, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, and Bangladesh depend on Ukraine for wheat.
The least developed countries and low-income food-deficit countries are already struggling with high population, low productivity of agriculture land, climate change, inflation, and the COVID-19 situation. Challenges of food supply are growing because of the closure of seaports for cargo shipment, oil processing units, movement of energy, and other resources from point of utilization to a place of negative development. Point of utilization means countries and/or sectors that need help to sustain losses of food, fertilizer, energy etc. incurred from war; while place of negative development can be considered as countries that are fuelling war rather than focusing on peace. When there is a war, it is not just between two countries, it impacts what we eat today and tomorrow." - Keval Shah, "Ukraine: The Breadbasket of Europe, Impact of Crisis on Everyone’s plate" Canadian Science Policy Centre, August 2022.
"Historically, Ukraine has been considered a breadbasket for neighboring and more distant regions. Ukraine has one-third of the world's most fertile black soils and a relatively flat landscape that allows for higher yields and larger fields that contributed to the development of Ukraine's crop-based agriculture. Approximately 80% of arable land in the country is used to produce cereals, oilseeds, vegetables, and other annual crops (State Statistics of Ukraine, 2020; World Bank, 2021). Since 1992, crop production has dominated Ukrainian agriculture, and we show changes in production and exports of crop and livestock commodities in Figures A3 and A4. In 2021, primary agriculture contributed almost 10% of Ukraine's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 18% of employment, and 44% of total export value. When up- and downstream sectors are accounted for, the share of agriculture increases to approximately 20% of Ukraine's GDP (von Cramon-Taubadel & Nivievskyi, 2023). Ukraine has signed 12 bilateral and multilateral trade agreements since 1995, became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2005, and established a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) with the EU in 2016 (EU Commission, 2024). Concurrently, import tariffs and many specific tariffs on nonsensitive agricultural and food products were reduced to Most-Favored Nation (MFN) levels. Ukraine's continued efforts to expand trade relationships through trade policy liberalization led to expanded exports of agricultural products since the mid-1990s.
Before the full-scale Russian invasion, Ukraine supplied approximately 50% of global sunflower oil, nearly two-thirds of sunflower meal exports. While sunflower oil is processed for human consumption, sunflower meal as a by-product is used as feed for livestock production. The main destination markets for sunflower oil were China (48%), the EU (25%), and Turkey (7%). Currently, sunflower oil is consumed in 48 countries around the world, with the biggest consumption in the EU, India, and China5 (IndexMundi, 2023). Ukraine was the third largest exporter of rapeseed, and seventh largest exporter of soybeans before the war. The country ranked fourth in corn exports, with top destinations including China, EU, Egypt, Iran, and Turkey.
Ukraine was the seventh largest wheat exporter before the war and was expected to be the fifth largest wheat exporter in the 2021/2022 marketing year (USDA, 2022a). Middle East and North African countries highly depend on Ukrainian wheat with Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as the main export destinations (FAO, 2024a; Smith, 2023). For example, in 2021 Ukraine supplied 35% of total wheat imports in Egypt where wheat and wheat products comprised 31.5% of daily consumption6 (FAO, 2024a; International Trade Centre, 2024). Lebanon imported 61.5% of its wheat from Ukraine in 2020, wheat and wheat products account for 31.8% of daily caloric consumption, and the price of bread increased by an astonishing 70% after the blockade of Ukrainian exports (IPES-FOOD, 2022; OEC, 2021).
Other African countries are also import dependent and exposed to high price volatility, including Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia as the most vulnerable (Abay, Breisinger, et al., 2023b; Breisinger, Kirui, et al., 2023a; Breisinger, Diao, et al., 2023b). Other countries, like Burundi and Rwanda, indirectly depend on Ukraine's sunflower oil through re-exports from Egypt (EU Commission, 2022b). The prices of vegetable cooking oil, bread, and wheat flour have increased dramatically along with fuel prices and the cost of living overall. West Africa and the Sahel region are also negatively affected by high commodity prices and scarcity with up to 10 million people at risk to become food insecure due to the war in Ukraine. Several Asian countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia have experienced similar challenges given import dependency on wheat supplies from Ukraine and Russia to meet domestic demand (Mamun & Imrul Kabir, 2023; USDA, 2022b)." - "Global economic effects of war-induced agricultural export declines from Ukraine" Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC, September 1, 2024.
If you wanted to engineer a global famine then attacking a key global breadbasket and shutting down choke points in critical waterways would be opening salvos.
Ukraine has always been important real estate for its food production and as a bridge to Asia and the Middle East. As long as the war continues its grain and wheat exports will continue to decline, causing many countries dependent on Ukraine to look elsewhere.
What must be remembered is this artificial scarcity is by design. The global depopulation agenda spans national borders, regimes, election cycles, religious divides, and ideological conflicts.
During the global Covid theatrics Mr. Putin, the Chinese, and the Ayatollah all played along and wore masks like all the other duplicitous leaders around the globe.
So throw out from your mind any idea or thought that Russia and Iran are opposed to the West in earnest and that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are between one bloc of nations against another, or between one ideology against another. The game that's being played by the elites transcends the fate of civilizations and nations and encompasses the whole planet.
The war aims in Ukraine, similar to Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, are to reduce the population, clear the land, and drive refugees into Europe. Russia, Israel, and the West share the same aims in Ukraine, as they do in the Middle East. Death. Destruction. Famine. And disease.
