(OTTAWA) Canada is sending seeds to Ukraine, including fast-growing buckwheat, to help deal with a food crisis caused by the Russian invasion, Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau announced Monday.
Posted at 3:16 p.m.
Updated at 5:42 p.m.
Ukraine, like Canada, is one of the largest wheat exporters in the world and supplies many countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, as well as the United Nations World Food Programme. “There are small countries for which food security is compromised,” Minister Bibeau said in a telephone interview on Monday.
Ukraine has asked Canada to provide seeds as well as equipment to certify grain transported by rail through Europe. Russia has blocked Ukrainian ports, including the important port of Odessa, and Ukrainian silos are overflowing with grain from its latest harvest, which it cannot export.
Buckwheat, used in making soba noodles, grows faster than wheat, making it easier to grow for Ukrainian farmers under intense pressure.
Minister Bibeau also announced that Canada would ship mobile silos to Ukraine, which can be transported and installed quickly, and “eventually, perhaps, grain elevators.”
“The goal is to be able to have storage space for the next harvest, because right now the silos have either been destroyed, bombed, or in other cases there are still grain in the silos ready to be exported, but the problem is really to have access to transport, explained the minister.
“We share a certain number of entrepreneurs who are established in Canada and Ukraine, so that allows us to really understand their needs and to be able to provide them with technical and financial assistance at this level. »
“Canadians want to help”
According to Mme Bibeau, Canadian farmers “want to contribute” to alleviating the global food shortage resulting from the Russian invasion. She said the government and Canada’s grain farmers are doing “everything they can” to get as much grain as possible to developing countries facing hunger.
Canadian grain farmers are well aware of global food shortages in the wake of the Russian invasion, she said, and they are “really trying their best to produce more.”
“If we compare it to last year, which was a very bad year because of the drought, we hope to have about 44% more production this year,” said Mr.me Bibeau.
Katie Ward, president of the National Farmers Union, said Canadian growers are fully aware of global shortages and that there is already “a real push to cultivate every acre they can grow”.
At a press conference on Monday, Mr.me Bibeau has also launched a consultation on how to address labor shortages in the Canadian agricultural industry, including on family farms.
She said Ukrainian farming families fleeing to Canada would be welcome in this agricultural sector, which has many similarities with that of Ukraine.
The World Food Program has been warning for months that many countries that rely on Ukrainian wheat are at risk of starvation due to shortages.
Earlier this month, Mykola Solskyi, Ukraine’s minister responsible for agrarian policy, told a House of Commons committee that the Russian military was deliberately targeting Ukrainian grain warehouses. He also accused Russia of stealing Ukrainian grain and exporting it to Syria as “Russian grain”.
Vladimir Putin’s forces also placed mines in some Ukrainian fields and bombed food storage facilities. Last week, in the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv, a vegetable oil storage facility belonging to the Canadian-Dutch company Viterra was hit by a Russian missile strike; no one was killed.