Source: United Nations (video statements)
Acting Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) Carl Skau linked disruptions in the Gulf to hunger elsewhere, saying, “an oil tanker anchored in the Strait of Hormuz can mean one less meal a day for a child in Sudan, where basic food costs are up almost 40 per cent since February this year.”
Skau warned that “suffocation of fertilizer exports has also hit this planting season hard across Africa and Asia,” and reported that WFP has been exposed to “20 per cent higher shipping costs, 35 per cent more on fuel for our airdrops and our humanitarian flights, meaning less assistance for the people we serve.”
On the Black Sea, he said Russian and Ukrainian exports “equal one third of global wheat supply,” and that “grain shipments through the Bosphorus Strait are now down 40 per cent year on year.”