UN: US to buy tons of Ukraine grain to help starving regions
BULLA HAGAR, Kenya — The United States is stepping up to buy about 165,000 tons of grain from Ukraine in the next few weeks for an upcoming shipment of food aid from ports no longer blockaded by war, the World Food Program chief told The Associated Press.
The final destinations for the grain are not confirmed and discussions continue, David Beasley said. But the planned shipment, one of several the U.N. agency that fights hunger is pursuing, is more than six times the amount of grain that the first WFP-arranged ship from Ukraine is now carrying toward people in the Horn of Africa at risk of starvation.
Beasley spoke Friday from northern Kenya, which is deep in a drought that is withering the Horn of Africa region. He sat with women who said the last time it rained was in 2019.
Their bone-dry communities face yet another failed rainy season within weeks that could tip parts of the region, especially neighboring Somalia, into famine. Already, thousands have died. The WFP says 22 million people are hungry.
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 the drought-prone region struggles to cope amid high food and fuel prices driven partly by the war in Ukraine.
The keenly awaited first aid ship from Ukraine is carrying 25,000 tons of grain, enough to feed 1.5 million people on full rations for a month, Beasley said. It is expected to dock in Djibouti on Friday or Saturday, and the wheat is to be shipped to northern Ethiopia, where millions of people in the Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions have also faced deadly conflict.
Ukraine was the source of half the grain that WFP bought last year to feed 130 million people. Russia and Ukraine signed agreements with the U.N. and the Turkish government last month to enable exports of Ukrainian grain for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February.
But the slow reopening of Ukraine’s ports and the cautious movement of cargo ships across the mined Black Sea won’t solve the global food crisis, Beasley said. He warned that richer countries must do more to keep grain and other assistance flowing to the hungriest parts of the world.
“With oil profits being so high right now — recordbreaking profits, billions of dollars every week ... the Gulf states need to help, need to step up and do it now,” Beasley said. “It’s inexcusable not to.”
He asserted the World Food Program could save “millions of lives” with just one day of Gulf countries’ oil profits.
Despite grain leaving Ukraine and rising hopes of global markets beginning to stabilize, the world’s most vulnerable people face a long, difficult recovery, the WFP chief said.
“Even if this drought ends, we’re talking about a global food crisis at least for another 12 months,” Beasley said. “But in terms of the poorest of the poor, it’s gonna take several years to come out of this.”