““Russia has dealt another blow to the world’s most vulnerable,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said upon hearing the news that President Vladimir Putin had decided to end that country’s participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative. That deal allowed the export of Ukrainian (and Russian) grain, crucial not just to stabilizing prices in the affluent West, but also to basic food security elsewhere. “This is really another act of cruelty,” Thomas-Greenfield added.

She’s right. The decision to hold hostage millions of people in the global south, who are already bearing the brunt of so many modern horrors — from conflict and displacement to drought and the wanton destruction of their landscapes and habitats — is the act of a deranged and desperate man.

Still, it’s not Putin who turned dozens of countries, whose people once were able to till the soil and nourish themselves, into dependencies whose populations have no choice but to purchase imported — often low-quality and genetically engineered — grain. We helped do that, through food assistance provided for purportedly charitable reasons, and through our ideological attachment to globalized trade.”

https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/grain

#Russia #Ukraine #Putin #WorldHunger #FoodInsecurity #GlobalizedTrade