European Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius says that increasing agricultural and livestock production in the European Union is not “the magic solution” to the food crisis caused by the Russian blockade of Ukrainian sea ports. This blockade prevents Ukraine from exporting its grain to the rest of the world.
Sinkevicius emphasized that the war cannot be used as an excuse to delay the European Green Deal. “The terrible war in Ukraine is no reason to postpone the Green Deal, but rather to intensify our work,” he said. He made these remarks in response to a recent repeated plea from the Agriculture Committee to postpone climate and environmental measures in European agricultural policy.
“Increasing production in the European Union will not be the magic solution to help our international partners, neither developing countries nor Ukraine itself,” Sinkevicius said Monday during a debate with the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee. Various Agriculture ministers have also urged Brussels to relax Green Deal elements.
Before the war, Ukraine was a major grain exporter, particularly important for ensuring food security in the Middle East and North Africa. Sinkevicius added that it is necessary to increase food production in the most vulnerable countries, “so that their structural dependence is reduced.”
The commissioner stressed that the current challenge for food security “is global and not internal.” “We have no food shortages in Europe. On the contrary, we produce and subsidize more meat than we can consume and continue to waste food in quantities that are, to say the least, disgraceful,” he noted.
He added that the problem of the war in Ukraine is not a lack of food but a distribution shortage.” He emphasized that the problem is “primarily” logistical in nature.
“The only way forward is to put pressure on Russia and unblock the Black Sea ports, because at this moment there are 40 million tons of grain in Ukraine, of which 20 million is ready to be exported in July,” he said.