GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — United Nations aid officials are warning an end to the Black Sea Grain Initiative could spike food prices and hurl millions more people into hunger, particularly in the Horn of Africa, Reuters reported.

The Black Sea deal was reached in July 2022 to allow the export of grain and foodstuffs from three Ukrainian ports following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion and blockade of Ukraine. The deal brokered by the UN and Turkey and signed in separate agreements with Ukraine and Russia has seen more than 32 million tonnes of agricultural products shipped to global markets.

The deal has been renewed three times during the ongoing war and is due to expire July 18. Russia has been threatening to exit the arrangement, saying obstacles to its own grain and fertilizer shipments that have not been addressed. Ukraine government officials also have said Russia is developing alternative routes for its fertilizer exports and may be unwilling to rejoin the deal as a result.

While famine was averted in parts of the Horn of Africa this year thanks to an unexpectedly robust rainy season, UN aid officials remain concerned for about 60 million people still facing food shortages in seven east African nations.

“A non-renewal of the Black Sea initiative would absolutely hit eastern Africa very, very hard,” Dominique Ferretti, senior emergency officer for the World Food Programme (WFP), told a briefing in Geneva. “There’s a number of countries that depend on Ukraine’s wheat and without it we would see significantly higher food prices.”

The WFP is prepositioning as much food as possible and would be compelled to try to switch suppliers if the deal were scrapped, Ferretti said.

According to the UN, about 700,000 tonnes of wheat has been shipped to Kenya and Ethiopia since the Black Sea deal began. While that is only about 2% of the total volume, the region also has been hit by the surge in wheat prices since the war began, although prices have since come down.

A World Health Organization official said some 10.4 million children faced acute malnutrition and reported the highest admittance levels to medical facilities in the past three years in Somalia, South Sudan and parts of Kenya.