THE UK is working on a plan to avert global food shortages by getting grain supplies out of Ukraine by rail, a cabinet minister has said.

Environment Secretary George Eustice said the government was studying ways to move the stockpiles which have been inaccessible due to Russian military action.

In an exclusive interview he told GB News: “There are two things that can be done. One would be to try to get a safe passage out through the Black Sea but that is very difficult because Ukraine themselves have closed the port of Odessa for security reasons.

“And there’s a lot of mines there and very few commercial shipping companies are willing to take the risk of sending ships to the Black Sea at the moment.

“The alternative would be to try to find a way of getting it out by land probably by rail, but that would include and require some investment in repairing some of the rail infrastructure.”

Speaking in an interview during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, Mr Eustice said Russia has been stealing Ukrainian grain and selling it.

“It is a challenge, but it’s an important issue for us to focus on,” he said. “There are around 25 million tonnes of wheat stranded in Odessa at the moment.

“We know as well that the Russians have been stealing some Ukrainian wheat, so the UK is also making available the technology we have to test for provenance so that we can make sure that the Russians aren’t able to sell that stolen wheat on the international market.”

He said grain stores need to be cleared out to make way for this year’s harvest and that a land route out of Ukraine is more likely than sea.

Mr Eustice said: “A more likely route would be to try to find a way of getting it out into the world market by a rail route. These are the sorts of things we have to address because if we don’t, those stores will not be able to get that grain on the world market for one.

“But secondly, the crop that Ukraine has this year will also not have a place to go into store unless those stores can be cleared of last year’s stock.”

He said the Government was looking at re-purposing grain grown to make biofuels to put it on the world market for food use but that the USA still needs convincing.

“We think this is the right thing to do, because we believe you could temporarily reduce the amount of maize and wheat going into biofuels,” Mr Eustice told GB News.

“That would in the short term give you a significant increase in additional maize in particular on the world market and that would help to ease prices down and make sure the world can get access to the food that it needs.

“We always knew the US would be a bit more sceptical about this because they rely more on biofuels for their petrol to go in their cars.

“We knew that would be the case but we still think it’s the right thing to do. And we need to work to reassure them that actually it isn’t going to cause the sort of problems that they worry about.”