The Role of Ukraine in Ensuring Global Food Security: Current Challenges and Prospects

Abstract

Even though Ukraine’s GDP is less than 0.2% of the world’s GDP, it is one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products, accounting for 911% of global wheat exports and 13–16% of global corn exports. As such, Ukraine has been instrumental in ensuring global food security in recent years. Food insecurity and inflation have been made worse by the war in Ukraine, which has changed global patterns of commodity production, trade, and consumption in ways that will maintain prices at historically high levels. Ukraine managed to restore the main export route for its grain in the Black Sea in volumes close to pre-war levels. The indicators of April 2024 exceeded February 2022. The resumption of Ukrainian grain exports helps in decreasing market prices and reducing world hunger. With this in mind, the purpose of the article is to identify priority areas for strengthening Ukraine's role as a guarantor of global food security. It also highlights the dynamics of production of the main types of crop products in Ukraine. The following methods were used for the study: empirical, monographic, extrapolation, graphical, benchmarking, and SWOT analysis. An in-depth study of secondary data highlights that Ukraine currently holds leading positions in global agricultural production and exports, including sunflower seeds, sunflower oil, rapeseed, a quarter of corn, wheat and barley, and soybeans. Based on the extrapolation method, wheat exports to the world market were forecasted until 2027. The features of Ukraine's dominance in the world sunflower oil market were characterized. To reflect the impact of the war on global and Ukrainian food security, a benchmarking analysis of wheat exports in Ukraine and Russia for 2014–2024 was conducted, and the change in the global Food Price Index and certain types of products (2009–2024) was considered. A SWOT analysis of Ukraine's agricultural sector in the international market is presented. The article outlines priority directions for developing Ukraine's agricultural sector as a future guarantor of global food security.