How Black Sea deal’s revival can avert global food crisis

USAid chief Samantha Power has described the Russian excuse to end the deal as a “life and death decision” not based on truth. It was full of “falsehood and lies” and could jeopardise the lives of millions of the world’s poorest of the poor living in the least developed countries like Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia. The Russian stand, reflecting its growing desperation owing to its failure to win the war as it expected, is being interpreted as its ultimate strategy to use the disruption of food supplies as a weapon. President Putin, perhaps, believes that this is how he can force the western countries and others supporting Ukraine to accept Russian conditions to end the war, including a guarantee that Ukraine will never join the NATO bloc and the annexed Crimea region will remain a part of Russia. Ukraine and its western allies, as expected, have straightaway rejected these “unreasonable” demands. Now since the Black Sea deal remains a thing of the past, Ukraine has begun to use the land route to export its wheat and other grains. Since this route passes through European Union territories, it has caused uneasiness among the farmers in Europe because the prices of their wheat are crashing owing to its increased availability there. The EU as a bloc is the world’s largest wheat producer after China. Therefore, with a view to protecting the interests of the EU farmers, the EU authorities have allowed five member-countries – Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – to ban the sale of Ukrainian wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds in their areas while allowing the transit of these commodities to other destinations. However, the fact remains that the land route can never be a replacement for the sea route.