Barns in southern Ukraine are brimming with grain, but the world may end up going hungry anyway. In the New York Times, Carlotta Gall and Kamila Hrabchuk report that this year’s strong harvest is colliding with a worsening battle over Black Sea ports and shipping, throttling exports from both Ukraine and Russia—two of the planet’s biggest suppliers of wheat and other grains. With Ukraine’s main ports under attack and shipping lanes increasingly risky, buyers have pulled back and prices for Ukrainian farmers have crashed, leaving some with nowhere to store their crops and no way to cover basic costs for the next season. “We don’t know how we will survive,” one farmer says.
Reporters Gall and Hrabchuk detail how drone strikes and port attacks have pushed exports to a fraction of normal levels: Ukraine moved only about 20% of its usual August volume, while Russia’s exports hit a 10-year low. Alternative routes via road, rail, and the Danube River are limited and themselves under fire (in the case of the Danube, drought has chased its water levels to crippling lows). Aid groups warn that without a new grain corridor deal, farmers’ livelihoods and global food supplies are both at risk. For the on-the-ground reporting from the Mykolaiv region, read the full piece in the New York Times.