Miller Magazine Issue: 151 July 2022

98 ARTICLE MILLER / JULY 2022 grains exports in Ukraine are via deep sea ports. With a loss of more than 50% of their export logistics as a result of the conflict in the region, the bottleneck for storage capacity is becoming even more acute. Panellists agreed that the resilience of the logistics and infrastructure sector should be based on the diversi- ty of infrastructure, functional redundancies and storage capacities. Other pressures include climate change and increased demand from net importing grains countries. Regarding the resilience of the seed sector, panellists considered it to be robust enough, as the industry works mainly locally, particularly in Ukraine. The session on food security and trade stressed the importance of maintaining an international trade system based on common rules. Victoria Prentis MP, UK’s Min- ister for Agriculture, underlined the UK’s efforts to keep food markets open, predictable and transparent and how the UK government aimed to boost sustainable agricul- ture in developing countries via partnership agreements. The IGC Chair considered that under normal circum- stances, the Black Sea region was resilient enough to increase its productivity, the diversity of products and af- fordability for the global market. Given the current situa- tion, this was no longer the case despite the strong will of farmers to continue to produce. The UN representative stated that the world was in fragile state as COVID-19 had impacted food, energy and finance negatively affecting 1.7 billion people. Grains market volatility was one of the most sensitive areas. The representative from the French Ministry explained that the Food and Agriculture Resil- ience Mission (FARM) initiative had been established as a European platform for discussion to address food se- curity in the most vulnerable countries. Two sessions addressed the nexus of sustainabili- ty and the grains value chain. The inputs industry saw sustainability projects as an opportunity to incorporate innovation to improve the resilience of food produc- tion. Trading companies had also been engaged in sustainability schemes to respond to the request from food processors. They considered that certification of sustainability schemes should not be a requirement to supply or access the market as some consumers were not prepared to pay the extra costs. However, farmers should be at the forefront of sustainability schemes and certification should be a way to remunerate the farm- ers being certified. USSEC compared the sustainability schemes as a journey which started a hundred years ago, with soil protection schemes followed by the im- provement of machinery and plant genetics. The main challenges facing farmers today were audits, compli- ance and benchmarking for consumer certifications, leading to higher overheads and market fragmentation.