How Much Grain is Stuck in Ukraine?

About 20m tonnes of grain meant for export is trapped in Ukraine. Its president Volodymyr Zelensky has said this could rise to 75m tonnes after the 2022  harvest. The war also means that this year's harvest will be smaller. As much as 30% of the 86m tonnes of grain Ukraine normally produces will not be harvested, says Laura Wellesley, a food security specialist at think tank Chatham House.

Ukraine’s grain goes to Asian and African nations as shown below:

Ukraine is usually the world's fourth-largest grain exporter. It normally produces 42% of the world's sunflower oil, 16% of its maize and 9% of its wheat. In addition, wheat exports from Russia - the world's largest exporter - is down.

Western sanctions do not target Russian agriculture, but the Kremlin argues they have hindered exports by hiking insurance rates and affecting payments. Russian ships carrying agricultural products are not barred from EU ports.

Ukraine and Russia usually supply over 40% of Africa's wheat, according to the African Development Bank. But the war has led to a shortage of 30 million tonnes of food in Africa. This has contributed to a 40% rise in food prices across the continent.

In Nigeria, it has helped increase the price of staples such as pasta and bread by as much as 50%.

The EU is trying to help - setting up "solidarity lanes", so that Ukraine's grain can be shipped from ports on the Baltic Sea, and also from the Romanian port of Constanta. For part of the journey to Constanta, the grain can be transported by barge along the Danube.

However, one major problem is that Ukraine's train tracks are wider than those in the rest of Europe. That means grain be unloaded from one set of wagons at its border and reloaded onto others. It has been taking as much as three weeks for grain to cross Europe and reach ports on the Baltic. The Ukrainian Grain Association, a trade body, says only 1.5m tonnes of grain a month at most has been exported. Before the war, Ukraine had been exporting as much as 7m tonnes of grain a month

This war has brought untold misery for people of Ukraine, Russia and the world. There is no convincing reason for the war. If the U.N. is a functioning body, it has to embark on securing a ceasefire and then through dialogue find a solution that meets key issues of the conflicting parties. Otherwise, the world will face rising inflation and food shortages in the poorest parts of the world. Is that what the warring parties want?

Reference:

Why does the world need grain to be shipped from Ukraine? BBC News