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.
Lebanon has the world's highest food inflation. So a ship stocked with corn for animal feed isn't a solution for its woes or those in other countries where people are going hungry.
But the shipment from a Ukrainian Black Sea port is offering hope. https://t.co/8RZR0frh2d
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 6, 2022
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.
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.