Blockaded ports in the Black Sea, the collapse of the harvest in Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, after the Russian invasion and then systematic grain theft from Russia - for months there was little good news on the food supply.

World market prices rise to record levels.

This hit the poorer countries in particular.

In the meantime, however, not only the prices have fallen sharply.

The Eastern European EU states even complain that their agricultural markets are being flooded with cheap grain from Ukraine, thus endangering domestic production.

Henrik Kafsack

Business correspondent in Brussels.

  • Follow I follow

"There are increasing signals that this increase, if left unchecked, could cause serious difficulties for EU agricultural producers," says a joint paper that Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia presented at the meeting of EU agriculture ministers on Monday presented in Brussels.

The EU must act urgently.

The reason for this is that the EU reacted to the blockade of Ukrainian exports by Russia with trade facilitation.

Above all to supply the world market and poorer countries, the EU created so-called Solidarity Lanes to facilitate the processing and controls of Ukrainian agricultural goods at the borders.

It also temporarily abolished import duties on Ukrainian goods.

Import thousands of times higher than 2021

The result was a drastic increase in grain imports to Eastern Europe.

According to the paper, imports of corn from Ukraine have risen from a few thousand tons to several million tons.

Poland, for example, imported 6,000 tons of corn from January to November of the year before last.

In the same period last year it was 1.6 million tons, and in Hungary maize imports rose from 5,000 tons to 900,000 tons.

The import of wheat from Ukraine during this period "in some EU countries was several hundred or even several thousand times higher than in 2021," the paper says.

The trade facilitation also greatly increased imports of sugar, flour, honey, sunflower seeds and other agricultural products.

The Eastern Europeans complain that the goal of smuggling Ukrainian agricultural products onto the world market is being missed.

"The overland transport of Ukrainian corn to Western Europe, such as to countries with bottlenecks, is largely unprofitable," they point out.

The consequence is that the grain is displacing domestic products as a cheap animal feed.

The six states do not question aid to Ukraine.

Rather, they are demanding support for their farmers and the condition that grain imported via the solidarity tracks must be resold by the EU on the world market, i.e. it does not remain in the EU.

According to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Germany supports the goal of Ukrainian grain reaching the end of the "Solidarity Lanes": the European ports for onward transport to the countries of destination.

The situation on the world market is noticeably easing

Even without this grain and despite the sharp decline in Ukrainian production last year, the situation on the world market has meanwhile eased noticeably.

The price of flour has again fallen below the threshold of EUR 290 per ton and is thus approaching the level of EUR 275 before Russia invaded Ukraine.

In May 2022 it was still 430 euros.

The price of sunflowers - a market where Ukraine accounts for 50 percent of world production - is back at 570-600 euros a tonne.

It had risen from 500 euros in 2021 to 620 euros in January 2022 and finally 900 to 1000 euros in May 2022.

The grain price index of the FAO was also only 4.8 percent higher at the end of the previous year than in the same month of the previous year.

There are several reasons for the drop in prices: Ukraine has increased exports after the end of the Russian blockade of the Black Sea ports, Russia is also exporting more grain, and it was harvest time in the southern hemisphere from Australia to Argentina to Brazil.

Little hope for consumers

However, according to experts, European consumers cannot expect prices to fall quickly.

The situation is still too volatile for that.

Not only the consequences of the Ukraine war, but also the increasing effects of climate change on harvests play a role.

There is no all-clear for the poorer countries of the world either.

The UN trade organization UNCTAD emphasizes that prices are still well above those of 2020.

In addition, the sharp rise in the dollar exchange rate makes imports even more expensive for these countries.