Articles Tagged with ''ukraine''

India on Saturday banned wheat exports in efforts to protect its domestic supply and that’s drawn the criticism of the U.S. and its fellow G7 member countries, says U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Ukrainian farmers will begin harvesting millions of acres of winter wheat in July, but if Ukraine is unable to export it, the country’s economy will likely collapse and the hundreds of millions of people that depend on receiving that grain will suffer even worse than they are now, United Nations World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley said Wednesday.

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.

When the Russian military invasion cut off Ukraine’s ability to export sunflower oil and wheat, it helped push “a cascading food crisis around the world,” according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Agency for U.S. Agency for International Development. Now Indonesia, which last week banned the export of palm oil, is exacerbating the conditions that are driving global shortages and price spikes of vegetable oil.

The USDA on Thursday reported yet another Chinese purchase of more than a million metric tons of U.S. corn, pushing cumulative U.S. corn sales to China so far in the current 2021-22 marketing year to roughly 14.7 million metric tons.

Chinese buyers have contracted this week to buy 1.347 million metric tons of U.S. corn, the latest large daily purchase in an effort to lock down supplies after the Russian invasion of Ukraine cut off exports from the country.

Ukrainian farmers are struggling to export their corn, wheat and sunflower oil on railcars, trucks and river transportation along the western border, but not much is making it out through Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, according to a new report released Wednesday out of the Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food.

The USDA announced Monday that China purchased more than 1 million metric tons of U.S. corn, adding to the buying spree from tight U.S. stocks as the Russian invasion continues to hobble Ukrainian exports.

The USDA reported Monday sales of more than 1 million metric tons of U.S. corn to Chinese buyers. The sale comes on the heels of a USDA report showing a smaller-than-expected U.S. corn crop this year as well as amid the war in Ukraine that has all but cut off Ukrainian exports.

The years-long drive by the European Union to promote agricultural conservation and sustainability at the cost of production has been thrown off the rails as the Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens food security in countries that need access to affordable grains.