Ukraine and Russia provide more than a quarter of the world’s wheat exports, and the war has sent global prices to a 13-year high, causing alarm in Middle Eastern nations that rely on imports.
“It’s already too expensive for us, so I can’t imagine what will happen when the prices jump even further,” llham, a Yemeni citizen, told Reuters.
Elsewhere in the food-poor region, shoppers in Lebanon tried to stock up on bread early to avoid higher prices, while bakers in Egypt said they were already feeling the pinch of higher flour costs.
Across the Middle East and North Africa, fallout on food prices from the war in Ukraine could drive millions more into “food poverty”, said the WFP’s senior regional spokesperson, Abeer Etefa.
The region is particularly vulnerable to rises in the cost of basic foods due to inadequate local production and high rates of poverty, with anger over food costs fuelling the “Arab Spring” protests in 2011.
Yemen, which is almost entirely dependent on food imports, buys at least 27% of its wheat from Ukraine and 8% from Russia.
Seven years of conflict have battered Yemen’s economy, hitting employment and more than doubling food prices – leaving more than half of the nation’s 30 million people hungry, according to the International Rescue Committee.
