Cereals: the bitterness of Ukrainian farmers

Vitali Bylenko looks bitterly at the wheat in his barn. He is one of those Ukrainian farmers struggling more and more to export their cereals after the exit of Russia from an agreement for their delivery by the Black Sea.

Ukraine, European countries and the United States have deplored Moscow’s decision to abandon this important agreement, concluded in July 2022, which made it possible to reopen Ukrainian agricultural exports by sea despite the Russian invasion.

According to Mr. Bylenko, 41, this agreement negotiated by the UN and Turkey, which made it possible to avoid an aggravation of the world food crisis, has worked badly for months.

Since the winter, “it only applies on paper,” he told AFP.

Ukraine, a major pre-war exporter of grain and sunflower oil, has accused Moscow of obstructing the deal in recent months.

Faced with the few grain cargo ships arriving in Ukrainian ports, Mr. Bylenko, based in the kyiv region, began to take alternative routes.

“Offers to buy our grain in Odessa were scarce and we have already transported almost all of our grain to small river ports,” he explains.

– Low prices –

The wheat, maize and sunflower he grows on his 1,300 hectare farm and employing around 35 people, thus left via neighboring Romania.

“For the remaining five months (of 2023), that will not change substantially,” he says.

But the road through Romania is more expensive and more complex than that of the Black Sea, the river ports being 200 km further from his farm than Odessa.

“Our profit margin is decreasing,” notes this farmer, forced to lower his selling prices to compensate for the additional cost of transport.

Without other options, cereals will now flow into Romania, driving prices down further, he fears.

“The more products there are, the lower the price,” fears the operator who has 400 tonnes of wheat stored on his farm.

“If before the war, the price (for the sale of its production, editor’s note) was around 270 dollars per ton, today those who buy are offering 120 dollars. And we would like at least 135 dollars,” says Mr. Bylenko.

If the situation is difficult, it remains for the moment less dramatic than last summer, when the farmers did not know at all if they were going to be able to sell their production, nuance Mr. Bylenko.

Cereals have a very important symbolic meaning in Ukraine, a country with a strong agricultural tradition and in which millions of people died in 1932-1933, during the Great Famine artificially organized by the Stalinist regime.

Even the Ukrainian national flag, consisting of blue and yellow horizontal stripes, symbolizes the “blue sky above the golden wheat fields”.

The office of Lyudmyla Martyniouk, CEO of the Kivсhovata Agro food company, is decorated with sheaves of wheat and a portrait of the national poet, Taras Сhevchenko.

With more than 30 million hectares of arable land in Ukraine, “it is very important for us to have access to markets in Europe, Asia and Africa”, underlines Ms Martyniouk.

– “Competitive” –

The end of the grain deal is “very unpleasant” because it means Ukrainian producers are likely to be forced to sell at a loss, she said.

She is also worried about the impact of this crisis on African countries, some of which were very dependent on grain imports from Ukraine: “We cannot allow famine in Africa,” she said.

His company cultivates wheat, maize, sunflower and sorghum on 2,500 hectares, supported by Japanese investors. American-made combines work in the fields, harvesting winter wheat.

Like Mr. Bylenko, his company relies on river ports to export, especially since the intensification in recent days of the bombardments on the port region of Odessa. “We have no other solution,” she said.

The abundance of cereals in Ukraine and the relatively low costs temper her pessimism: if these cereals manage to leave Ukraine, they will be competitive on the markets where they remain inexpensive and decisive “for food security”, she says.