Ukraine produced a lot of grain, can farmers elsewhere replace the crops lost to war?
Ukraine
Published Apr 13, 2022
Tridge summary
Ukraine and Russia produce a substantial amount of grain and other food for export. Ukraine alone produces a whopping 6% of all food calories traded in the international market. At least it used to, before it was invaded by the world’s largest nuclear power. Russia, meanwhile, is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, providing more than 17% of all wheat sold across national borders. At least it used to, before it was struck with some of the most severe international sanctions ever inflicted.
Original content
Any way you slice it, there’s a lot of bread this year that was supposed to be sourced from Ukrainian or Russian wheat that definitely won’t be. So naturally the question arises: if not from the Black Sea, from where will come our daily bread? When it comes to cereals like wheat, corn, rice and barley, the big players talk about millions of metric tonnes, or MMTs. A single MMT of wheat contains about 3.4 trillion food calories, which is enough to feed every person in Europe for about two days, or the entire population of Africa for about a day and a half – although, of course, people would still need vitamins and protein. Ukraine produced about 80 MMT of grain (a category that includes wheat, corn and barley) in 2021, and is expected to harvest less than half of that this year. A shortfall of 40 MMT is enough missing calories that a country like the UK could only make it up by having everyone stop eating for three years. That’s the thing about tonnes of grain: a million here and a ...
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