Articles Tagged with ''Black Sea''

Progress was made Wednesday toward an agreement to open up Ukraine’s main Black Sea ports and a deal could be struck soon, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukraine’s farmers are preparing to begin this year’s problematic summer harvest on the 75% of fields not under Russian occupation, but producers, analysts and political leaders are preoccupied with the broader question of where the grain will be stored as efforts falter to reopen exports through Black Sea ports.

Ukrainian farmers are short on diesel, fertilizer and manpower. They’ve been bombed, occupied, had their fields mined and silos and tractors destroyed by the Russian military. They've even had their grain robbed and sold overseas while they themselves are struggling to export because of a Russian blockade at ports, sources tell Agri-Pulse.

Kees Huizinga has been farming near Kyiv, Ukraine, for 20 years and he’s determined to continue this year even as Russian bombs fall nearby, diesel fuel and other inputs are increasingly sparse and he sees little hope of being able to sell his crops.

A leading U.S. ag economist thinks the Biden administration may have to open up the Conservation Reserve Program to cropping this year because of grain shortages that could result from the crisis in Ukraine.

The nearly week-long Russian invasion of Ukraine is threatening to restrict already tight global supplies of grain and fertilizer as Black Sea distribution hubs and supply lines shut down amid the chaos and violence that is only expected to worsen as Russian aggression intensifies and Western sanctions broaden.

The war in Ukraine may impede the country’s ability to export millions of tons of wheat and corn to China, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey and elsewhere, and U.S. grain could be called on to fill the supply gap.