An Assessment of the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict on the European Cereal Exports Using Network Theory

Abstract

Cereal grains are basic nutrients in the human diet. Given the production capacity gap between countries, food security is subject to global challenges. The Russian invasion of Ukraine from February 2022 has inevitably raised concerns on the resilience of the agro-food system. In this paper, we use network theory to examine the export flows of the European producers of wheat, maize, and barley. Based on annual data from the United Nations Comtrade database, we build specific weighted and directed networks to comparatively assess the dynamics of cereal exporting patterns. We employ centrality metrics for network statistics and modularity for community detection. The central hub for all three cereals remained unchanged. Our results show the following core countries Russia for wheat, France for barley and Ukraine for maize. Their main export destination is also the same, from Russia to Türkiye, France to China and Ukraine to China respectively. Compared to the previous year, several destinations including low-income countries worldwide did not appear as recipients of the Ukrainian exports, but additional countries located in Europe and interconnected by land emerged as partners. This study provides a general assessment of the European exports to support a better understanding of the community structure under the Russo-Ukrainian conflict setting.