Some 276 million people worldwide were already facing acute hunger, Food Body warned.Roma: The World Food Programme on Friday called for the reopening of ports in the Odessa region of southern Ukraine so that food produced there can move freely to the rest of the world.”Right now, Ukraine’s grain silos are full. At the same time, 44 million people around the world are marching towards starvation. We have to open up these ports so that food can move in and out of Ukraine,” WFP chief David Beasley said in a statement.”The world demands it because hundreds of millions of people globally depend on these supplies,” he said.”I urge all parties involved to allow this food to get out of Ukraine to where it’s desperately needed so we can avert the looming threat of famine,” he said.With ports blocked because of the war, millions of tons of grain are stored in silos in Odessa and other Ukrainian Black Sea ports.If the ports are not reopened, Ukrainian farmers will have no place to store the next summer harvest, according to the WFP, leading to a major food waste.Some 276 million people worldwide were already facing acute hunger at the start of 2022 and that number is expected to rise by 47 million if the conflict in Ukraine continues, with the highest increases recorded in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the WFP.Before the war, most of Ukraine’s food was exported through the country’s seven Black Sea ports, the Rome-based agency said.(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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