Wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade dropped 2% to $6.12 a bushel. Prices have fallen 23% since the start of the year, and 57% since hitting an all-time high of $14.30 a bushel in March last year. “These agreements matter for global food security,” António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, told journalists Wednesday. “Ukrainian and Russian products feed the world.
Ukraine and Russia together account for nearly a third of global wheat exports, according to Gro Intelligence, an agricultural data firm. They are also among the top three global exporters of barley, maize, rapeseed oil and sunflower oil. Following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, Moscow blockaded crucial grain shipments from the country’s Black Sea ports. That meant that millions of tons of the region’s grain went undelivered to the many countries that rely on it.