U.S. Malthusian Policies Cancel Out Black Sea Grain Initiative

Oct. 14, 2022 (EIRNS)—Printing paper can’t produce grain; shouting at Russia doesn’t produce it either, if physical economies are deliberately neglected and degraded. After great cries were raised this summer by the U.S., World Bank, WFP, Oxfam etc. figures about Russia blocking large volumes of invaluable Ukrainian grains from export, dropping American exports of grain, tragically, have cancelled out the Russia-Turkey-Ukraine-UN agreement called the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The “20 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain” upon which world famine or African survival were claimed solely to depend, were not more than 10 million, and 7.2 million metric tons had been shipped out of Ukrainian Black Sea ports between July 21, when the Initiative was agreed to, and Sept. 30. This was reported by Reuters Oct. 13 from the Black Sea Grain Initiative under the UN. But an Oct. 12 U.S. Department of Agriculture report on American and world grains estimates, shows the following:

• a 3.6 million metric ton drop in U.S. wheat exports from the 2021-22 crop year to this 2022-23 year, with exports at 19 million tonnes the lowest in 50 years;

• a 1.9 million tonne drop in world wheat supplies which USDA attributes entirely to U.S. and Argentina shortfalls;

• A 1.25 million tonne reduction in U.S. corn production despite farmers switching to corn to get along with less fertilizer, and corn exports from the United States are down about 3 million tonnes from the previous year. India and Ukraine corn exports are up, U.S. and Argentine down;

• U.S. rice exports will be the lowest since 1991-92.

In the United States and Canada fertilizer prices have been out of control; “green finance” has demanded farmers use less inputs overall; rail bottlenecks have stopped grain transport; yields have been cut by worsening of an intensifying drought ignored for decades by U.S. governments. Malthusian U.S. policies have cost food to hundreds of millions.

Adding insult, NATO countries have not upheld their side of the Initiative, an agreement to remove insurance and shipping sanctions obstacles to the exports of Russian grain crops, which have enjoyed large harvests. For this reason, Reuters reports, the Russian representative to the Initiative, Gennady Gatilov, delivered a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres Oct. 12 saying that Russia may refuse to renew the Black Sea Grain Initiative in November.