EU policymakers are set to arrange talks with Brazil’s and Chile’s Presidents. The EU aims to urge those huge Latin American countries to halt their exports of agricultural produce to Russia. Recently, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin placed an embargo on food import sales from the EU, US, and the other countries which endorsed the Western sanctions against Russia. Currently, Moscow is making efforts to orchestrate food imports from the Latin American states in order to avoid the pending food shortage. President Putin has already conducted a series of talks and bid a good price for regular food supplies. So, suppliers from Latin America have got a trump card. Incurring huge losses from the food embargo, the West is trying to prevent the reorder of the import markets. Meanwhile, some agricultural regions and import companies in Latin America have noticed the benefits of the Russian embargo. For example, Chile is tipped as a leading beneficiary of Russia’s embargo on European fish. It hopes to make good use of new trade agreements with Russia. 90 Brazil’s meat-packing factories are given green light to immediately start exporting chicken, beef, and pork. “Russia is a promising market which is expected to become a large consumer both of meat and cereals. The latter means that we are ready to increase export sales of soya beans and corn,” Seneri Paludo, Brazil’s minister of agriculture stated. Such excitement in the agricultural powerhouses of Latin America has triggered concern in Brussels. “We will be talking to the countries that would be potentially replacing our exports to indicate that we would expect them not to profit unfairly from the current situation,” said one senior EU official. He added that it would “be difficult to justify” countries pursuing diplomatic initiatives to fill the gap left by the EU, the US, Norway, and Australia.
