Oleksandr Chubuk’s warehouse should be empty and waiting for the new harvest, with its shipment of winter wheat already shipped abroad. Instead, their silos in central Ukraine are full of grain that cannot be shipped because of the war with Russia.
The green ears of wheat are already ripening. Soon the horizon will look like the Ukrainian flag, a golden sea under a blue sky. Chubuk he hopes to harvest 500 tons, but for the first time in his 30 years as a farmer, he is not sure what to do with them.
“Now the only thing I have is hope,” he said.
The war has trapped some 22 million tons of grain inside Ukraine, according to the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a growing crisis for the country known as the breadbasket of Europe for its exports of wheat, corn and sunflower oil.
Before the Russian invasion, Ukraine was able to export 6 to 7 million tons of grain per month, but in June it shipped just 2.2 million tons, according to the Ukrainian Grain Association. They normally send 30% of their grain to Europe, 30% to North Africa and 40% to Asia, explained Mykola Horbachev, head of the association.
The Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports has left the future of the next harvest in Ukraine up in the air. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) warns that the war threatens food supplies for many developing countries and could worsen hunger for up to 181 million people.
In the meantime, many farmers in Ukraine could go bankrupt. They face the most difficult situation since the country became independent in 1991, Horbachev said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country is working with the United Nations, Ukraine and Russia to find a solution and has offered to establish safe Black Sea corridors for wheat shipments.
For now, Ukraine is trying less efficient alternatives to export its grain, at least to Europe. Right now, 30% of exports pass through three ports on the Danube River in southeastern Ukraine.
The country is also trying to ship grain through its 12 border crossings with European countries, but trucks have to wait for days and Europe’s infrastructure still cannot absorb such a volume of grain, Horbachev said. “It is impossible to build that infrastructure in a year”, he told The Associated Press.
the russian invasion transportation costs have also skyrocketed. The cost to deliver this year’s harvested barley to the nearest Romanian port, Constanta, is now between $160-180 per tonne, compared to $40-45 previously. Even so, a farmer who sells barley to an intermediary receives less than 100 dollars per ton.
Losses accumulate in the accounts just like the harvest in the barns. “Most farmers risk go bankrupt very soon. But they have no other option but to sell their grain cheaper than it costs,” Horbachev said.
In addition to those complications, not all farmers can sell their produce.
Before the invasion, Chubuk could sell a ton of wheat from his field in the kyiv region for $270. He now he doesn’t get buyers even at 135 dollars per ton.
“The whole system gets stuck,” including storage options, said James Heneghan, vice president of Go Intelligence, a weather and agriculture data analytics firm. The system was designed to keep Ukrainian exports in constant motion, not to store them.
Without income from grain already harvested, future harvests are a challenge. “Farmers need to buy fertilizers, seeds, diesel, pay wagesHorbachev said. “Ukrainian farmers cannot print money.”
The country still has room in warehouses for the new harvest.
Ukraine has the capacity to store between 65 million and 67 million commercial grains, according to Horbachev, although 20% of that is in Russian-occupied territories. The producers themselves can store between 20 million and 25 million tons, but there is also a part of these deposits in occupied areas.
By the end of September, when the corn and sunflower harvest begins, Ukraine will lack storage space.
The FAO recently announced a $17 million project to help address that shortfall. Gro Intelligence’s Heneghan said a temporary solution could be to hand out silo bags to growers.
In the regions in the east and south, close to the front lines, farmers continue to work their fields despite the risk to their lives.
“They can kill me in a moment with a bombardment, or as we see now, the fields are on fire”, said Yurii Vakulenko in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where black smoke could be seen in the distance.
Its workers are risking their lives for little compensation now that warehouses are refusing to take their grain, Vakulenko said.
Ukraine had a record grain harvest last year, 107 million tons. This year even more was expected. Now, in the best case scenario, producers will collect just 70 million tons of grain this yearHorbachev estimated.
“Without opening the (Black Sea) ports, I don’t see any solution for Ukrainian farmers to survive,” he said. “And if they don’t survive, we won’t be able to feed African countries.”
(With information from AFP / By Hanna Arhirova)
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Source-www.infobae.com