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It is a sobering assessment - not least because Russia under Communism styled itself as the champion of the worlds poor. But it is not just Africa that has to worry, she says. For where food shortages and famines prevail, and where governments fall, people will inevitably flee - fuelling, she fears, a repeat of the migrant crisis of 2015 that saw millions trying to reach Europe from sub-Saharan Africa.

You already have a refugee crisis in Europe with people fleeing there from this war in Ukraine, she said. You may now get a refugee crisis from hunger in third countries too.

Her warnings may sound apocalyptic - yet no more than those of the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, who used that very word this week when he warned that the Russian blockade could lead to famines worldwide.

That is a major worry, and it is not just a major worry for this country, it is a major worry for the developing world as well, he said. Sorry for being apocalyptic, but that is a major concern.

The comments by Mr Bailey - who like most central bankers normally measures his words carefully - reflect an awareness among world leaders that the Ukraine food crisis could not have come at a worse time for the developing world. As well as the aftershocks of the Covid pandemic, inflation rates and oil prices are already rising, and parts of Africa are gripped by drought.

Ukraine is doing its best to address the crisis, mindful that its own agricultural workers livelihoods are in jeopardy too. Its farmers are a resourceful bunch, and have already been celebrated in the war for using their tractors to tow Russian tanks off the battlefield when they run out of fuel.

Many have continued to farm despite being near frontlines, some even wearing flak jackets when ploughing. Russian aggression continues mostly against big cities, but less so in the countryside where the planting goes, so we expect to plant 90 per cent of our fields as normal, said Ms Stoyanova.

The problem, though, is in getting their product to market. A new harvest is due in July and August, and already there is diminishing room available to store it. Efforts to try to transport some of the rising grain mountains in Odesa into neighbouring Romania and Poland by land face formidable difficulties.

Trains and trucks, at best, can only carry a fraction of the volume of todays giant cargo freighters. And European railways also operate on a different gauge - leading to lengthy hold-ups at the border while cargos are transferred laboriously from one train to another.

We normally export 160 million tonnes of cargo by sea and 90 million by train and truck, said Mr Berestenko. Now were having to do it all by land, and its just not possible. Its not just our infrastructure that isnt up to it, its our neighbours infrastructure too.

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Mountains of grain left to rot as Vladimir Putin 'blackmails the world' - The Telegraph