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Russian forces now control about 22 percent of Ukraine’s agricultural lands since the invasion began on February 24, affecting the production of one of the main suppliers of food grains and oil, the US space agency (NASA) said on Thursday.
Satellite data analyzed by scientists at the US space agency show that Russia’s occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine gives it control of land that produces 28 percent of the country’s winter crops, mainly wheat, barley, rye, and 18 percent of summer crops, mainly corn and sunflowers.
The war’s disruption of crops and planting seasons — including farmers fleeing war, labor shortages and bombed-out fields — could have a major impact on global food supplies, NASA scientists said. .
“The world’s breadbasket is at war,” said Inbal Becker-Reshef, director of NASA’s Harvest program, which uses US and European satellite data to study global food production.
According to US data, before the war Ukraine supplied 46 percent of sunflower oil traded on global markets, 9 percent of wheat, 17 percent of barley and 12 percent of corn.
Russia’s occupation has blocked food exports from Odesa, the main port on the Black Sea, and destroyed storage and transport infrastructure in some areas.
This means that farmers across the country, but especially in the occupied areas, have fewer opportunities to get their produce to warehouses and markets.
And it also threatens the planting of winter crops in the fall.
“We are in the beginning stages of a food crisis that is likely to affect in some way every country and person in the world,” Becker-Reshef said.
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