End of Black Sea grain deal raises spectre of hunger for tens of millions

The end to the Black Sea grains deal will hit the Horn of Africa hard, aid officials said on Monday, warning that another hike in food prices would add to the tens of millions of people facing hunger.

Russia halted participation on Monday in the year-old UN-brokered deal –which lets Ukraine export grain through the Black Sea – over what it called a failure to meet its demands to implement a parallel agreement easing rules for its own food and fertiliser exports.

The grain deal was hailed as preventing a global food emergency when it was brokered by the UN and Türkiye last year, halting a de facto blockade of Ukrainian ports by Russia.

“In fact, the Black Sea agreements ceased to be valid today (Monday),” said Russian diplomat Dmitry Peskov.

“Unfortunately, the part of these Black Sea agreements concerning Russia has not been implemented so far, so its effect is terminated.”

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the grain deal’s sponsor, said he still believed Russia wanted it to continue.

The Russian and Turkish foreign ministers would talk, he said.

“I hope that with this discussion, we can make some progress and continue on our way without a pause,” Erdogan said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had discussions about the deal with his South African counterpart, President Cyril Ramaphosa, at the weekend.

Ramaphosa’s office confirmed that he would have further discussions with both Russian and Ukrainian leaders and the UN secretary-general about the matter.

A non-renewal of the Black Sea initiative is expected to hit Eastern Africa hard, Dominique Ferretti, World Food Programme senior emergency officer, told a Geneva briefing. “There’s a number of countries that depend on Ukraine’s wheat and without it we would see significantly higher food prices.”

Agri SA executive director Christo van der Rheede said: “South Africa is very fortunate in that although we still import approximately 1.5 million tons of wheat annually, we do have enough wheat in storage.

“We need to monitor this and our farmers have responded. They have also started to produce more wheat and that is good news for South Africa.”

Heleen Viljoen, an economist at Grain SA, said: “Russia wants the ammonia pipeline going in one of the Ukrainian harbours to be reinstalled. This pipeline hasn’t been working and it’s really impacting Russia’s production capabilities.

“Until Ukraine and the rest of the Black Sea initiative countries agree on letting that pipeline be operational again, Russia is not going to agree on the extension of the deal.

“That might mean for local prices, especially on the grain farmers side, it can give them support in the short term for prices to increase.

‘However, if we look to the consumer, this is not necessarily going to change anything. Because most of Ukraine’s production has been lowered and the grain deal hasn’t been performing as it should.

Both those two factors have already been priced into the market.”

Cape Times