Newsday - India bans wheat exports - BBC Sounds

The outbreak of war between the two of world's largest producers of wheat in Ukraine and Russia has put Delhi in a prime position to sell its surplus supply of the cereal.

However, it recently decided to ban the export of wheat. The decision is thought to be driven by a poorer harvest than expected due to scorching heat waves in March.

So will India's wheat export help its own people? And how will it affect the rest of the world?

Jayati Ghosh is a development economist from India and is currently a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

She said: "The latest heatwave in India destroyed a lot of the standing crop, the estimates are about twenty to thirty percent of the harvest of wheat (that) would be affected by this significant heave that we just had in March and April. And so, this means a significant decline in production, and India's going to be hard put to feed it's own people".