The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) says that prices for vegetable oil and grains have reached record levels in the last month, and this threatens millions of people in Africa and the Middle East with malnutrition and starvation.. The main reason for the abnormal rise in prices is the drop in the supply of these products due to the war in Ukraine, Voice of America reports..

The FAO also states that the index of fluctuations in world prices for a basket of goods last month averaged 159.3 points, which is 12.6% more than in February.. At the same time, the February index was already a record high since its inception in 1990.. In addition, the FAO says that the war in Ukraine largely caused a jump in the price of cereals, including wheat, oats, barley, and corn..

“Very high food prices require urgent action,” Josef Schmidhuber, FAO Deputy Director of Markets and Trade, told a briefing in Geneva today. According to him, the most significant increase in prices occurred for vegetable oils: by 23.2%. The reason for this jump is mainly due to the rise in price of sunflower oil used for cooking..

Ukraine is the global exporter of this product, but there is essentially no export through the Black Sea, and export through the Baltic also stops. In addition, prices for mineral fertilizers, the leading exporter of which is Russia, increased by 30%..

Josef Schmidhuber clarified that it is impossible to accurately calculate how much the war in Ukraine is to blame for record food prices, noting that other factors are at work, in particular, crop problems in the United States and China.

To meet the needs of food-importing countries, FAO is calling on donor countries to invest more in their own agricultural production to cushion the blow.

Soaring food prices and disruptions in supplies from Russia and Ukraine have threatened the food situation, especially in the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia, where the population is constantly undernourished and where millions of people survive on bread and cheap noodles.

Food insecurity is already sharply deteriorating in regions at risk, with 6 million children already malnourished and nearly 16 million people in urban areas living on the brink of starvation.

Russia accounts for about 30%, and Ukraine - 20% of world exports of wheat and corn, respectively. In addition, Ukraine ranks first in the world in the export of sunflower oil, and Russia is second..

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Recall that Russian troops bombed three ships in the Black Sea and block another 94 ships with food in Ukrainian ports, preventing them from entering the Mediterranean Sea.. The water area of \u200b\u200bthe Black Sea off the coast of Ukraine is mined by Russian invaders.