“Putin’s war is forcing us to take from the hungry to feed the hungry,” McCain told C-SPAN on Monday. “Rising prices are forcing tough decisions to cut diets in some of the world’s most desperate humanitarian crises, including in Afghanistan and Yemen.”
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that up to 13 million people around the world could face food insecurity as a result of the February invasion. More than 50 countries depend on Russia and Ukraine to produce about 30 percent of their wheat supply.
Ukraine is also a major supplier of grain to the World Food Program (WFP), which feeds 138 million people in more than 80 countries, including four “famine hotspots”: Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.
“Russia is bombing one of the biggest bread baskets in the world,” McCain said of Ukraine. “This war will further exacerbate global food insecurity by disrupting the upcoming planting season and the transportation of food within the country.”
The WFP estimates that Ukraine’s grain supply feeds 400 million people in a typical year, but that number is expected to fall sharply due to the war, the US Department of Agriculture has warned.
According to estimates by the Ministry of Agriculture, Russia is likely to increase its annual wheat exports by 1 million tons, while Ukraine is likely to reduce its wheat exports by the same amount. With the country’s Black Sea ports closed, some Ukrainian farmers may be planting crops that are more suitable for local consumption than for export.
Dr. Jim Barnhart, Assistant Administrator at the US Agency for International Development’s Office of Resilience and Food Security, told reporters Tuesday that global food insecurity was an impending crisis long before Russia invaded Ukraine.
The war has intensified existing roadblocks to the food supply chain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing humanitarian crises and global increases in fertilizer prices. Barnhart, who recently returned from Senegal and Niger, warned that “food disturbances” occurred in at least 14 African countries during the last global food crisis from 2007 to 2008.
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“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of treatment,” Barnhart said. “Experience has shown that $ 1 invested in resilience efforts σει can save up to $ 3 in humanitarian aid on the road, so all of this helps ensure that major shocks such as COVID-19, climate change and conflict do not cause the return of families. poverty and malnutrition “.
McCain said the UN aims to “feed more with less” by providing vulnerable populations with the most nutritious food. Infants and children are the first to be affected in most humanitarian crises, he said, adding that WFP distributes packages of high-protein food paste to support babies in areas of hunger.
“These are nutrients that we take for granted here in the United States because of course our children get them,” McCain said. “These children can not survive on wheat and grains alone.”
