On a recent afternoon in western Ukraine, a small army of combine harvesters rolled across endless farmland, kicking clouds of dust into the blue sky as machines gathered in a sea of golden wheat. harvested in All of that is on top of the 20 million tonnes of grain backlog that was trapped in Ukraine during Russia’s Crushing War.
Moscow’s blockade on Ukrainian grain shipments through the Black Sea will be lifted under a landmark deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey last week. If all goes according to plan, grain-laden ships will set sail from Ukrainian ports in the next few days, delivering the harvest from major breadbaskets to the starving world.
But despite the fanfare in Brussels and Washington, the deal has been met cautiously in the Ukrainian sector. Farmers, who have lived for months under the risk of Russian missile attacks and economic uncertainty, are skeptical that the deal will work.
The roar of the combine in these fields is a familiar racket this time of year, but much of the harvest is quickly stockpiled.
“Opening the Black Sea ports is not the magic answer in itself,” said Georg von Norken, chief executive of Continental Farmers Group, a large agricultural business with vast farmlands around western Ukraine. (CEO) said. “This is certainly a step forward, but I do not believe that this agreement will return Ukraine to its pre-war state,” he said.
The blockade has sparked wide fluctuations in crop prices and transportation costs. Storage is scarce for the latest harvest, leaving much scrambling for stopgap solutions.
Saturday’s missile strike that hit Odessa, Ukraine’s largest Black Sea port, undermined confidence in the deal and risked undermining efforts before it could be put into action.
“No one believes that Russia will not attack again,” said Vasyl Levko, director of grain storage at MHP, one of Ukraine’s largest agricultural companies.
Ukraine’s allies have political will. The White House welcomed the deal, while the United Nations and international aid agencies also warned that famine and political unrest could ensue if Ukraine’s grain remained blocked.
Releasing grain for shipping is expected to mitigate the growing hunger crisis brought on by the Russian aggression, which has fallen recently. “Very positive,” said Nikolai Gorbachev, president of the Ukrainian Grain Association. “It is possible to find a way.”
But even if reopened, Black Sea ports are expected to operate at about half their pre-war capacity, covering only a portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of unprocessed grain, experts say. . The ships will navigate Ukrainian mine-cleared routes used to prevent Russian ships from entering and will withstand inspections in Turkey to ensure no weapons are brought back to Ukraine.
Coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian War
- Grain blockade: The landmark deal aims to lift Russia’s blockade on Ukrainian grain shipments and ease the global food crisis.
- ambitious counterattack: Ukraine has laid the groundwork for recapturing Kherson from Russia. However, this effort requires enormous resources and can come at a great cost.
- Economic Pandemonium: Few countries have been hit as hard as Ukraine as the prices of food, energy and commodities continue to rise around the world.
- Inside the siege: For 80 days, a relentless Russian attack met unwavering Ukrainian resistance at the Avtostal Ironworks. People who were there are like this.
And it’s unclear if enough ships will return. Shipping companies that once operated in the Black Sea use other freight routes. Insurance companies are wary of covering vessels in conflict zones and no one will ship without insurance.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian farmers are grappling with crops that have stalled in large numbers from last year’s harvest. Before the war, new crops flowed in and out of the grain elevator like clockwork, from harvest to export. But Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea caused a massive pile-up.
An estimated 40 million tonnes of wheat, rapeseed, barley, soybeans, corn and sunflower seeds are expected to be harvested in the coming months. The storage facilities that were not destroyed by Russian artillery fire are now full and lack space to store the freshly harvested crops.
At the MHP Grain Processing Center, an hour east of Lviv, one day a truck full of freshly harvested rapeseed sifted through small, shiny, black rapeseeds. The seeds were transferred to a dryer and poured into towering silos. A nearby silo wasn’t there: it was filled with soybeans from the previous harvest.
A bigger concern is what to do with the winter-planted wheat that is now being harvested, Levko said. Levko’s company uses the wheat to feed his poultry farms in Ukraine and to produce grain for export. His silos at the Lviv site are nearing their limit, so the wheat must be packed in long plastic pods for temporary storage.
The company had been scrambling to buy more sheaths, but Russian rockets destroyed the only Ukrainian factory that makes them, and European manufacturers were overwhelmed with orders, Levko said. said Mr.
Next to the wheat harvest is the corn harvest. Levko added that they need to be piled on the ground and covered with tarps to protect them from the thousands of crows and pigeons that swirl nearby like black clouds and the decaying autumn rains.
“Crops have to be stored everywhere,” he said, tracing his arm across the vast field. He added that even if the deal to lift the Black Sea blockade goes well, it could take months for Odessa’s shipping capacity to help ease the grain pile-up.
Meanwhile, farmers seek to expand the labyrinth of alternative transportation routes they have built across Europe since the outbreak of war.
Before the Russian blockade, Ukraine exported up to 7 million tons of grain per month. Since then, Ukraine has been able to ship only about 2 million tonnes per month via a tireless patchwork of roads and rivers.
Continental Farmers Group was exporting its harvest via the Black Sea, von Nolcken said. Ship deliveries can reach the Middle East and North Africa in as little as 6 days.
But the blockade has forced the company to ship some of its grain back by truck, train, barge and ship to Poland, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, an odyssey that can take up to 18 days.
With so many exporters competing to bring grain out of Ukraine, shipping costs jumped from about $35 before the war to about $130 to $230, with the eastern regions closer to the Russian-occupied territories seeing the steepest prices. We are facing an uptick, Mr. Fong said. Added Norken. At the same time, grain prices in Ukraine plummeted by about two-thirds. This is because the blockade left farmers with excess grain, threatening many people’s livelihoods.
European countries have worked furiously to solve one of their biggest challenges: rail transport of grain. Previously, her 38,000 grain wagons in Ukraine carried grain, mostly to Black Sea ports, but ran on Soviet-era tracks that differed from those in Europe. Therefore, rail freight destined for other locations must be transferred to other trains upon arrival at the border.
The biggest opportunity to expand exports is trucks. Roman Thruston, head of Ukraine’s main agricultural lobby, said his group aims to carry 40,000 tons of grain per day with trucks. By June, the truck he was shipping 10,000 tons per day.
But that still only partially clears the Ukrainian backlog. Also, border crossings are congested due to heavy traffic on the roads. MFP’s Levko said it took him four hours to move a grain truck from Ukraine to Poland before the war, but now it takes him four days. It will take him ten days instead of two to cross the Serbian border. The European Union is looking to ease back up with expedited border permits.
“The question is how long this situation will last,” said von Norken. “On February 24, everyone assumed this was going to be her week of exercises. Now, more than 150 days later, we are talking about booking and opening again.”
However, harsh realities still stand in the way of Ukraine. Despite the war, there has been a hefty harvest so far this year.
“We are piling up a tsunami of grain, producing more than we can export,” added von Norken. “We will still be sitting on a crop that we cannot get out of.”
Erica Solomon Contributed report from Lviv, Ukraine.