“An idiot like Putin will destroy lives”, the wrath of this Ukrainian wheat producer

Volodimyr’s sheds are full here, in farms around Kryvyi Rih, about fifty kilometers from the Kherson front. “Come, I’ll show you the wheat, so that you understand our misfortune. It is both our pride and our pain. It’s gold. And it’s a shame that an idiot like Putin destroys lives: he is the one who deliberately causes a world famine“, he accuses.

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And for good reason, this farmer finds himself with some 5,000 tonnes of wheat on his hands, which have now lost half of their value, and which cannot find a buyer for the moment. Until a few months ago, however, this grain producer exported its production through the ports of Odessa, Mikholaiv and Kherson.

“80% of grain exports to Ukraine passed by sea. Today, everything has stopped. We tried by train but the waiting list is long, not before December for us. It’s impossible to go by train, we won’t be able to honor our orders…” he sighs.

Russia, which invaded its neighbor on February 24, is blocking Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and therefore preventing the export of these cereals, which fed 400 million people last year.

The United Nations is also conducting intense and discreet negotiations to free these tens of millions of tonnes of Ukrainian cereals and thus prevent a world food crisis, according to the UN coordinator in Ukraine.

According to the Ukrainian grain association, which brings together grain producers and exporters, ten million tonnes are still stored in silos. Before the conflict, the country was the world’s fourth largest corn exporter, on the way to becoming the third largest wheat exporter, and alone accounted for 50% of the world trade in sunflower seeds and oil before the conflict.

A situation all the more urgent as the next harvest will soon arrive. And yet, despite the war, Volodimyr keep sowing. This wheat will be for the start of the school year, the barley, in October. And and right now, it’s the sunflower. “This wheat was sown last fall, before the war. We have just sown the sunflower but twice less than last year. We don’t take risks because the future is uncertain. So we work… We are farmers, we work the land and we still have hope because our survival depends on it. The villagers believe that sanity will prevail and this disaster can be stopped.”

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And then there are the prices of gasoline and fertilizers which are exploding: Volodimyr is expected to lose between 50% and 60% of its income this year. He has to repay more than 600,000 euros by next fall, under a zero-interest loan guaranteed by kyiv.