U.S. buys massive Ukrainian grain for food aid

The United States will buy about 150,000 tons of grain from Ukraine over the next few weeks for the delivery of food aid from ports no longer blocked by the war.

David Beasley, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), said the final destination of the grain had not been determined and discussions were continuing.

But, as one of several shipments being sought by the UN agency, the amount of food planned to be delivered is more than six times the amount that the first WFP-arranged vessel from Ukraine is now transporting to people at risk of starvation in the Horn of Africa .

Mr Beasley was speaking in northern Kenya, a region mired in drought and withering. He sat under a thorn tree among the local women, who said the last time it rained was in 2019.

Their extremely dry communities will face another failed rainy season in a few weeks, which could plunge parts of the region, especially neighboring Somalia, into famine.

Thousands have died. The World Food Programme says 22 million people are hungry.

Mr Beasley said in the next few weeks “we are likely to declare a famine”.

He called the situation facing the Horn of Africa a “perfect storm on top of a perfect storm, a tsunami on top of a tsunami” as drought-prone regions struggle to cope with high food and fuel prices partly driven by the war. Ukraine.

Mr Beasley said the long-awaited Ukrainian emergency vessel was carrying 23,000 metric tons of food, enough to feed 1.5 million people for a month.

Expected to dock in Djibouti on August 26 or 27, the wheat should be transported overland to northern Ethiopia, where millions of people in the Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions face not only drought but also deadly conflict .

Ukraine was the source of half of the food WFP bought last year to feed 130 million hungry people. Russia and Ukraine signed deals last month with the U.N. and Turkish governments to allow Ukrainian grain exports for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February.

However, Mr Beasley said the slow reopening of Ukrainian ports and the cautious movement of cargo ships in the mining Black Sea would not solve the global food security crisis. Richer countries must do more to keep food and other aid flowing to the world’s most hungry regions, he warned, citing names.

“Now that oil profits are so high — record profits, billions of dollars a week — the Gulf countries need help, they need to step up, and act now,” he said.

“It’s inexcusable not to. Especially because these are their neighbors, these are their brothers, their family.”

He asserted that the World Food Programme could save “millions of lives” with just one day’s worth of oil profits from the Gulf states.

China also needs to help, he added.

“China is the world’s second-largest economy, and we get coveted from China,” or very little, he added.

The world’s most vulnerable people face a long and difficult recovery, the head of the World Food Programme said, even as food leaves Ukraine and hopes for global markets begin to stabilize.

“Even if this drought ends, we’re talking about a global food crisis that will continue for at least 12 months.

“But for the poorest of the poor, it will take a few years to get out of the way.”