West's role in food shortage cannot be ignored

This is an editorial from China Daily.

The panic buying of rice in some countries dependent on imports for food, after India, Russia and the United Arab Emirates suspended their rice exports recently, is an acute reminder of how delicate the world food security situation is.

Although there are weather causes — heavy monsoon rains causing serious crop losses in India — geopolitical reasons should be held accountable for this. As was predictable, the West attributes the looming food shortage around the world to Russia, after Moscow refused to renew the Black Sea Grain Initiative on July 17, the day the one-year deal expired. It accuses Russia of imposing a technical blockade of Ukraine's grain exports through the Black Sea, and some have urged the developed economies to form a NATO-type of organization in grain production and trade in response.

That accusation is unfair, and that proposal is absurd. To begin with, the West has failed to deliver on a promise to free up Russian agricultural exports that have been blocked by its sanctions. Although Russia's food and fertilizer exports are not under sanctions, the West's sanctions-related restrictions on Russia's banking, transit and insurance make its trade in agricultural products untenable.

The West shouldn't force the less-developed countries, mostly those in Africa, to pay the price for its Ukrainian-proxied offensive against Russia.

The United Nations is obliged to hold emergency meetings on the extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative to make it reflect the appeals of the two conflicting sides in a more balanced manner. That is crucial to preventing the initiative that was originally made to minimize the Ukraine crisis' impacts on world food security from being exploited as a new part of the conflict. That's actually what the responsible countries should have done even before Moscow signaled its intention to withdraw from the initiative. It is a pity that none of the Western countries has shown any interest in doing that.

These countries' studied silence over Moscow's complaint that their across-board sanctions have affected Russia's food exports is a telling sign that the sanction imposers are well aware that the "green channels" they opened for Russia's grain trade were only to forestall any flak that might come their way. They don't want to be held responsible for the food crisis because of their actions in instigating and prolonging the Ukraine conflict. Yet the greater the moral burden they try to put on Russia's shoulders, the more their own actions come under scrutiny.

The agricultural and food companies of the West already dominate the world grain market and food industry. If the developed countries are allowed to go further to form a "grain NATO", they will effectively hollow out such world food bodies as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and the UN World Food Programme. In doing that, they will gain control of the industries and technologies related to food as well as the policymaking and decision-making mechanisms related to world food security.

The West's culpability for the global food shortage is both clear and callous.