Is the world facing “a potential mass starvation event” due to the war in Ukraine? It is starting to look that way. Vladimir Putin is weaponizing food and America is losing wheat as a tool of statecraft to counter it. The invasion and Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea has created unprecedented market volatility and fears of a global food crisis. States that rely on Ukrainian wheat — notably those in the Middle East and Africa such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen — will bear the immediate blunt of the crisis, but it will have far-reaching global effects.
While various attempts to unlock Ukrainian wheat are taking shape, most notably the tenuous deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations at the end of July, they will not come soon enough to prevent starvation for some or in significant enough volumes to provide price relief for others. These are also short-term solutions; the war will have longer term effects on Ukrainian wheat. Russian shelling in the Kherson region has resulted in large-scale fires with hundreds of hectares of wheat burned. More notable is the loss of prime agricultural producing regions to Russia and long-term loss of export capacity due to war damage to port facilities and loss of territorial control of key ports.