How war in Ukraine is affecting food supply in Africa and the Middle East

theguardian.com:

When Lebanon’s Muslims sat down to their first iftar of Ramadan tonight, the meal in front of them will have cost significantly more than it did six weeks ago.

The Middle Eastern country, already mired in economic crisis and battling inflation before the war broke out in Ukraine, now finds itself grappling with even higher price rises for wheat and cooking oil.

“In 2021, when the prices were already up, I was using the same oil to cook several dishes,” Mona Amsha, from Beirut, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation this week. “Now, I can’t even do that.”

The fears around wheat imports – more than 60% of which came last year from Ukraine – are particularly acute because Lebanon’s reserves are limited. The huge explosion that tore through Beirut’s port in August 2020 and killed more than 200 people also destroyed the main grain silos. As a result, the country is thought to have enough wheat to last only about six weeks.

The government has said it is trying to secure fresh imports from India, the US and Kazakhstan – all of which would entail grain travelling much longer distances on increasingly expensive shipping routes. Meanwhile, according to agriculture minister Abbas Hajj Hassan: “There is no wheat crisis today in Lebanon.”

But shortages are already starting to show on supermarket shelves; some bakeries are rationing bread, and the price rises since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are obvious, says Bujar Hoxha, country director for Care International.

“From 24 February to 21 March we have seen a general increase of 14% on food prices,” he says. “For bread, for example, it’s 27%. For white sugar it’s 72%. For sunflower oil it’s 83%.” Fears are also mounting over the cost of fuel, essential to the supply of