FAO always objects to restrictions on global trade

“There is direct evidence of a food crisis, but it did not originate yesterday,” Oleg Kobiakov, Director of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Liaison Office with the Russian Federation, said on June 9 during a discussion at the Valdai Club platform, centered on recent developments on the global food market. 

“For the past six years, hunger engulfing the world has been drawing 10 million people a year into its orbit. From 2015 to 2020, the toll amounted to 60 million. In the last pre-COVID year, there were about 690 million suffering from hunger on the planet. The world’s population is approaching 8 billion. This means that on the global scale one person in twelve, mainly in the developing, poor countries, constantly experienced hunger, which negatively affected the state of health, the possibility of obtaining education and sufficient income, etc.

The COVID-19 epidemic has had a devastating impact on food security. The scale of hunger has increased dramatically. The coronavirus pandemic has pushed another 110-120 million people to the edge of starvation. In 2020, the number of hungry people in the world surged to 811 million.

FAO in collaboration with the World Food Programme, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the UN Children’s Fund annually publishes a flagship report on the state of food security in the world. The materials collected by our statisticians and analysts for the coming version of the report for the past year do not inspire optimism. If we recall that in 2015 humanity set the task of completely eliminating hunger by 2030, we will realize that, unfortunately, this goal once again remains unattainable.

A number of dire circumstances drag us backward. The main causes of hunger throughout human history have always been armed conflicts – small and large wars, which have resulted in the loss of human lives, and of the means of production, as well entailing death of livestock, crop failures, disruption of trade chains and, of course, decline in public well-being. This has been the case throughout the whole human history. Since the end of World War II, over a thousand small and medium-sized conflicts and about a hundred fairly large wars have taken place on the planet.

The second source of hunger is natural disasters. Due to climate change, global warming, anthropogenic activities, this factor is becoming more significant. This includes droughts, floods, typhoons, cyclones, and pest infestations, such as the recent outbreak of desert locust in East Africa. All of this affects food security, and, as a consequence, disaster areas and sometimes even entire countries and regions are thrown into the hunger zone.

Finally, the third group of destructive factors is various kinds of economic shocks associated with wars, natural disasters, and disruption of supply chains. It deregulates agri-food systems and directly impacts our consumer interests, negatively affects our well-being, health and ability to lead a fulfilling life.

Press conference moderator Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, intervened at this point: “If I understand correctly, a food crisis takes place, but it is in a permanent state, it did not start yesterday and, apparently, it will not end tomorrow.”

Oleg Kobiakov: “Recent events, among which one cannot fail to mention the war in Ukraine, have aggravated the crisis. FAO warned at the beginning of the year, in January-February, before the start of the Russian military operation, that the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine might have a negative impact on the global food market.

In this context, FAO does not separate Russia and Ukraine. These two countries account for up to 30 percent of the world grain supplies, in different proportions, considering their different climatic conditions. Ukraine, it is more about corn, as well as sunflower seeds and sunflower oil, while Russia is more about wheat. More than 50 countries depend on these supplies to the world market, and a number of countries satisfy from 90 to 100 percent of their grain needs through imports from Russia and Ukraine.

The Ukrainian grain stuck in the Black Sea ports, on the one hand, represents 0.2 percent of the total grain production, or less than 1 percent of the grain traded on the world market (this volume amounted to about 470 million tonnes last year). Nevertheless, the non-delivery of grain already commissioned, pre-paid, and expected by consumers, of course, creates in importing countries a shortage and upsurge in prices, which is immediately reflected in the world market, as well as provoking uncertainty about future supplies.  

The global food market is highly internationalized, and few countries live in conditions of food self-sufficiency. The international division of labour, severely disrupted by the pandemic, is just beginning to recover now. Due to a number of factors, including the above-mentioned armed conflict, this recovery process has started to develop not as smoothly as we wanted.

It is in the interests of the whole humanity to make international trade predictable, transparent and unencumbered by restrictions again. This will benefit everyone, and, above all, consumers, to whom each of us belongs to this category.

If we talk about sanctions, only sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council are recognized as valid in the international legal framework, while all the rest restrictions are qualified as unilateral measures, even if more than one country is involved. 

Let’s be realistic: a world free of wars is not yet achievable. There are wars within states and between states. A number of actors of international relations try to respond to the policies of those countries that are involved in conflicts, including through the application of sanctions.

The sanctions have affected Russia quite seriously. This is probably the most serious range of sanctions that has ever been applied against a single state. 

FAO has always opposed restrictive measures, including sanctions, in the international trade. Among our political recommendations for overcoming the current food crisis, there is also the call to analyse the sanctions regime and, if possible, to stop using sanctions.

As for Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposal to “exclude Russia from FAO”, which he made at the OECD meeting, let’s be realistic: it is impossible to erase Russia from the world map with a rubber. Russia is the largest agro-industrial power; its agro-industrial sector also includes fisheries and agriculture, tens of millions of rural workers and their families. Probably, there was a reason whyFAO’s founding fathers, when they were writing the Charter, – by the way, the delegations of the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR took part in the preparatory work in 1945 – did notconsider even a slight possibility of a member-state quitting from our “world agriculture council”.

It is not part of my mandate to assess political statements, but a fact remains a fact: FAO continues to cooperate with all countries of the world, including those countries that are taking part in the conflict with Russia and Ukraine. We are talking about the cumulative effect of obstacles both for the Ukraine exports and for the Russian exports, and this is the issue that the international community must resolve.

At the moment, on the political track, through the channels of the “big UN”, its Secretary General’s special envoys, with the participation of other interested parties, negotiations are underway in search of a specific solution to the specific problem of exporting the Ukraine grain blocked in ports. According to the publicly available information, these negotiations are close to being successfully concluded. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the solution is at hand.   

We at FAO wish success to the negotiating parties and count on the goodwill of all parties so that the impact of this negative factor on global food security would be eliminated a soon as possible.

In general, enough food is produced in the world to feed the entire population of the planet, regardless the prices for energy, fertilizers and chemicals. If food products were consumed rationally, if they were properly stored and transported without hindrance, then we would be able to solve rather quickly the issue of hunger, as it is, on a global scale”, Oleg Kobiakov noted in conclusion.  

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The forum was also attended by H.E. Mohamed Yongawo, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Sierra Leone to the Russian Federation; Dr Nourhan El-Sheikh, Professor of Political Science at Cairo University; Eduard Zernin, Chairman of the Board of the Russian Union of Grain Exporters; Ivan Timofeev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.