(Image: Daily Mail)
Yes, the media, U.S. President Joe Biden and other outraged Western politicians who, as usual, care about how poor people are doing, have informed us that Russia’s decision to renege on the agreement regarding the export of Ukrainian grain is unsurpassed in infamy: it leaves the poorest of the poor to starve.
But isn’t it weird that the poorest of the poor do not protest?
The answer to the above question: it is because the poor and hungry in the Global South know something that you, as a consumer of Western mainstream and social media, do not: that not a single grain of wheat or corn has reached them from Ukraine. Kiev has shipped the goods to Europe and China for human and animal consumption. Since sales and profits are much higher in higher income countries, only a negligible amount went to the global South.
But don’t blame Ukraine, because it’s not even the actual seller. The agricultural cartels in the USA own most of the fertile farmland in Ukraine and control the agribusiness there.
Due to the fact that any shortage drives up the price, regardless of where the grain is grown, Moscow has benefited America’s Big Agribusiness. Additionally, given that China may experience a grain shortage, it may have shown its displeasure with Beijing over the latter’s neutrality in the Ukraine conflict.
But the poorest are hardest hit by the price increases. The West would make accommodations on price if it were truly concerned.
Oh wait, that was Russia, which even offered free deliveries of its own grain to Africa. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out — because of the Western sanctions.
The icing on the cake was that instead of supplying poor countries with grain, Ukraine flooded Central European countries with it, threatening the livelihood of farmers there. Massive protests by farmers forced the Polish Minister of Agriculture to resign and Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria to ban imports of Ukrainian grain.
