From the fields of Ukraine to a bakery in Beirut, we find out what it costs to produce a global staple - bread.
This hour-long BBC radio documentary starts in the wheat fields of Ukraine with one of the farmers who is sitting on a bumper wheat harvest with nowhere to sell it. Without profit from this year’s harvest farmers won’t be able to sow and farm the next crop. Until the war started Ukraine was the world’s fifth biggest exporter of wheat. Now much of that grain, an estimated 20 million tonnes, is trapped in Ukraine and the price of wheat has been decimated.
In peacetime it would be loaded onto cargo ships at ports on Ukraine’s southern coast on the Black sea and transported to places like Egypt, Pakistan and Lebanon. Currently a tiny amount is managing to leave the country by boat along the Danube.
Lebanon used to import 81% of its grain from Ukraine and finding alternative sources is proving difficult and very expensive. The government is considering stepping in as shortages hit the shops especially of pita bread.
