In AP's latest story on the global food crisis, Beirut reporter Kareem Chehayeb, Dubai-based business reporter Aya Batrawy and Nairobi, Kenya-based correspondent Cara Anna combined on-the-ground reporting, key analysis from experts and their own subject expertise to shed light on the real-world impact and limitations of renewed Ukrainian grain exports. Their reporting reveals how everyone from Lebanese farmers and Syrian refugees to African aid groups don’t expect the much-publicized initial shipments to solve food insecurity as millions go hungry.
The story weaves in reporting and voices from countries desperately struggling with hunger and rising food prices.
Batrawy has a list of expert sources on food supply and shipping; she used their analysis and her experience covering the issue to show the real-world impact of the shipments and the Russia-Ukraine war. Anna, likewise, has written extensively about hunger in Africa and used her sources to get comment from an aid group: It will take weeks for grain to get to the continent and even longer for food prices to drop. Chehayeb has covered stories about Syrian refugees across Lebanon for years; for this Beirut-datelined story he tapped into his networks of social activists and Syrian families, finding a man willing to share how he experiences discrimination while waiting with scores of people trying to buy subsidized bread.
The Sierra Leone-flagged cargo ship Razoni, loaded with 26,000 tons of Ukrainian corn bound for Lebanon, sails under Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge at the entrance of the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul, Aug. 3, 2022. The Razoni was the first cargo ship to leave Ukraine since the Russian invasion.
AP Photo / Emrah Gurel
Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and United Nations officials board the cargo ship Razoni for inspection at the entrance of the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul, Aug. 3, 2022. The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, carrying 26,000 tons of corn from Ukraine, was bound for Lebanon.
AP Photo / Khalil Hamra
A man carries a sack of wheat flour imported from Turkey at a market in Mogadishu, Somalia, May 26, 2022. In East Africa, thousands of people have died as Somalia and neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya face the worst drought in four decades. Experts say it could take weeks for people in Africa to see grain from the shipments now coming from Ukraine.
AP Photo / Farah Abdi Warsameh
Workers package freshly-baked bread coming off a production line at an automated bakery in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, March 15, 2022. Lebanon has seen the world’s highest inflation of food prices; an aid group says the price of wheat flour has risen by more than 200% since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
AP Photo / Bilal Hussein
A truck unloads grain in the village of Zghurivka, Ukraine, Aug. 9, 2022. Before the war, Ukraine was seen as the world's bread basket, exporting 4.5 million tons of agricultural produce a month through its ports. Until shipments resumed recently, millions of tons of grain have been stuck due to Russian blockages since February.
AP Photo / Efrem Lukatsky
AP spotlighted the piece on Saturday; it pulled in nearly 224,000 pageviews, staying at the top of AP News for most of the day. It builds on months of AP coverage showing how the food crisis has gripped countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia since Russia invaded Ukraine.
In deeply reported and visually striking stories that leverage AP’s global footprint, text reporters, video journalists, photographers and editors have worked across continents to give voice to those struggling with rising food prices, the threat of food shortages and growing hunger as the war in Ukraine worsened the effect of droughts, inflation and other woes.