A former EU commissioner vying to lead the UN’s food agency would engage with Donald Trump to seek to reinstate a safe Black Sea corridor for grain exports as part of his drive to put food security at the heart of geopolitics.
Russia has been intensifying attacks on cargo ships in Black Sea ports, blocking Ukrainian exports. Phil Hogan, formerly Brussels’ top official on agriculture and trade, said he would “absolutely” seek to involve the US president and other world leaders in an effort to revive the route that enabled the export of 32mn tonnes of grain and food in 2022-23 under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
The deal was negotiated with the help of Turkey and the UN. But despite its specialist remit to promote food security, the Food and Agriculture Organization, which has been led by Qu Dongyu of China since 2019, stuck to the sidelines at that time. Qu has since cautioned against FAO staff getting involved in political activism.
Hogan said the 81-year-old Rome-based agency needed to become “relevant to the 21st century”.
“There is no doubt FAO needs reform,” said Hogan, who this month launched his bid to lead FAO. Its members elect a new director-general next June.
“I would certainly, as director-general, be centrally involved in trying to create the political conditions to ensure that food security is seen as just as important as global security,” he added.
One tool would be to use an FAO insurance brokerage scheme, established to help move food amid climate challenges and still “in its infancy”. It could be employed “for the purposes of ensuring that food is able to be transported through corridors in an emergency context,” he added.
Besides the Ukraine war, the US conflict against Iran has disrupted trade through the Strait of Hormuz, pushing up oil and fertiliser prices. This year’s powerful El Niño weather phenomenon also threatens to impact global food security.
But currently, FAO data “is not being used properly for the purposes of helping to create solutions to problems like we have in conflict zones and areas prone to hunger and affected by El Niño,” Hogan said.
Hogan said he would draw on his experience of dealing with Trump and his administration during the US president’s first term.
“President Trump is a dealmaker. He’s transactional. He likes farmers. He has tried to support farmers with special financial packages themselves during the market crisis and during the tariff wars. And I’ve done likewise with the European farmers during my time as the EU agriculture commissioner. So now we can build on this common ground. We’ve done it before,” he said.
“We found solutions to so-called intractable problems on trade . . . So I’m confident we can do the same again,” he added. “President Trump shares the objective of most western countries, which is he wants to see a more effective, efficient and agile UN system and especially around food security.”
Trump is a critic of multilateral agencies and a climate sceptic, but Hogan said the president “actually cares more about farmers and food than about many issues, so I would say on the issue of food security, I would have an open door to having a conversation with the United States government in a positive way”.
Hogan, who grew up on a farm in rural Ireland, earned the nickname “Big Phil” for his tall stature and tough reputation. He calls himself “steely with a smile”.
He served as environment minister from 2011-14, after Ireland’s economic crash prompted a European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF bailout.
“I had to reform local government and reduce expenditure and make a lot of tough decisions — I didn’t shy away from doing it,” he said.
Hogan moved to Brussels as agriculture and then trade commissioner between 2014 and 2020, when he quit after breaching Covid lockdown rules by attending a golf dinner. He has since worked as a consultant and is sinking some €250,000 of his own cash into his FAO campaign to succeed Qu.
Spain, Italy, Turkey and Angola have also nominated candidates for the role. But Hogan was optimistic.
“The vast majority of the European Union countries are supporting my candidacy and the other two European candidates know that,” he said.