Convoys of “grain trains” would transport wheat out of Ukraine under a huge rail operation being discussed to stop millions of people starving due to Vladimir Putin’s blockade of Black Sea ports.
As leaders of the G7 group of wealthy nations (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada) prepared to discuss the food crisis at a summit in Germany, Environment Secretary George Eustice told LBC Radio: “It’s a big challenge.
“Ukraine is a significant agricultural producer and there are a lot of North African countries that depend on Ukraine for importing much of their wheat in particular.
“So, there are two things that we are trying to address at G7.
“One is, there are currently around 25 million tons of grain, mainly wheat, in store in Ukraine from last year’s harvest. They have not been able to get that out through the Black Sea because obviously it’s a treacherous environment for shipping.”
He added: “There are a lot of mines that are in that area at the moment and Ukraine themselves for security reason have had to close the port of Odesa.
“So, one of the things that we are looking at is whether we can give more support to Ukraine to help them get this stock of wheat out into the world market by rail.
“That would require us to support them to help them with the funding to repair some of those rail lines.”
Ukraine previously supplied 10 per cent of the world’s wheat, up to 17 per cent of the world’s maize and half of the world’s sunflower oil.
Britain has recently been pushing for a “coalition of the willing” to open up safe corridors through the Black Sea to export wheat and other food staples from Ukraine’s ports, with the use of the Royal Navy even being mooted.
However, this plan appears to have been put on the back burner with the focus now on transporting the food supplies by land, even though it is extremely hard to do this at the scale required to prevent food shortages hitting many countries, particularly in the developing world.
Other problems are said to include that Ukraine’s railway gauge is not compatible with some in other countries in Europe.
It was not also clear whether Mr Putin would allow such a rail operation, which could be easily stopped by bombing rail lines.
Mr Eustice added that Britain was also arguing that countries should reduce temporarily the amount of maize and wheat that is used for biofuels, to significantly boost supplies available for use as food.
Mr Eustice added: “We always knew that the United States would be more sceptical about this because they are very heavily invested in biofuels. They see it as a significant part of their petrol supply.
“So, it was always going to be more challenging to get them to do it but we still think it is the right thing to do.
“We have got quite a long way to go to persuade the Americans of this, that’s without doubt.”
Britain is also providing technology to ensure that any wheat stolen from Ukraine by Russia does not make it to the global market, Mr Eustice added.
Last week Turkey said it was investigating claims that Ukrainian grain had been stolen by Russia and shipped to countries including Turkey, but added the probes had not found any stolen shipments so far.
Russia has previously denied allegations that it has stolen Ukrainian grain.
“Russia, it appears, are stealing some wheat from those stores,” Mr Eustice told Sky News.
“What the UK government is doing is making available the technology that we’ve got to be able to test the provenance of wheat. We’re working with other countries including Australia on this so that we can ensure that stolen Ukrainian wheat does not find a route to market.”
