How did the Russia-Ukraine war trigger a global food crisis?

Wheat stalks in a field near the southern Ukrainian city of Nikolaev in 2013 [File photo: Vincent Mundy/Reuters]

Russia’s war in Ukraine is preventing grain from leaving the “breadbasket of the world” and making food more expensive across the globe, threatening to worsen shortages, hunger, and political instability in developing countries.

Together, Russia and Ukraine export nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley, more than 70 percent of its sunflower oil and are big suppliers of corn.