Russia vows to remain reliable and responsible participant in global food market 

Addis Ababa, September 27, 2022 (FBC) – In a press release, the Embassy of Russia in Addis Ababa stated that the collective West continues an active disinformation campaign accusing Russia of the current crisis situation in the global food market. 

“According to that heavily biased and distorted approach, Russia is solely responsible for the “coming global famine” due to the increase in world prices for food, fertilizers, and energy resources, which is allegedly due to the ongoing special military operation to protect the population of Donbass.” statement indicates. 

The Embassy stressed that Russia remains a reliable and responsible participant in the global food market, one of the key suppliers of food to countries in need. 

“The international expert community is increasingly confirming the thesis that the root causes of food inflation were “distortions” in the global economy, systemic errors and miscalculations in the macroeconomic, energy and food policies of the largest Western countries. Climate cataclysms, COVID pandemic and massive anti-Russian unilateral sanctions exacerbated these negative trends, exacerbating the process of unbalancing global markets, primarily of agricultural products.” The Embassy said.

“The collective West, indiscriminately accusing Russia of provoking a food crisis, deliberately ignores the fact that the main beneficiaries of rising food prices and destabilization of its supplies are the largest Western corporations dealing with the production and trade of agricultural products, including members of the so-called Big Four (American Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill, as well as the Dutch Louis Dreyfus), which account for 75% to 90% of global trade in agricultural products.” 

“In fiscal year 2022, Cargill alone increased sales by 23% to 165 billion USD, posting a record of 5 billion USD net income for the same period. Pushing Russia out of world food markets and stimulating uncertainty on them creates favorable conditions for Western corporations to further extract additional profits.”

“On the contrary, the ability of Russia to increase the total export of grain up to 50 million tons and the continued supply of the Russian produced food, despite the illegitimate discriminatory restrictive measures of the US, the EU and the countries that have joined them, have a stabilizing effect on the global balance of supply and demand,” Embassy said.

Russia stated that it continues to responsibly and conscientiously fulfill its obligations under international contracts in terms of the export of agricultural products, fertilizers, energy resources and other critical products. 

The Embassy stressed the importance of the supply of socially significant goods, including food, for the socio – economic development of the states of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, the achievement of food security indicators and the implementation of the SDGs.

Russia was guided by the same considerations in the process of achieving the so- called Istanbul agreements on the unhindered export of Ukrainian grain and the removal of unilateral restrictions on Russian exports of agricultural products and fertilizers, according to the Embassy.

The Embassy underlined that Russia strictly complies with its obligations, proceeding from the fact that increasing food supplies is in the interests, first of all, of the population of the least developed countries with insufficient import solvency and low food self- sufficiency.

“As of September 19, 2022, as part of the implementation of the Black Sea Initiative, 169 ships left Ukrainian ports. The volume of food exported from Ukrainian ports is approaching 4 million tons, and this figure is constantly growing.”

Of particular importance from the point of view of ensuring global food security is the implementation of the second part of the “package deal” to promote Russian food products and fertilizers to world markets, the Embassy noted.

“Russian producers and exporters still face problems in financial transactions, logistical difficulties and extremely high insurance costs. So far, there are no reasons to talk about significant positive dynamics in reducing barriers for Russian products. Moreover, certain actions of the Westerners, in fact, exacerbate the food crisis.”