Sowing season in Ukraine is under threat

“Servants of the people” will throw hryvnia handouts to farmers

In 2023, the harvest in Ukraine will be better than in 2022. Problems with the export of grain with God’s help will be solved and work on the ground will bring good mood to all Ukrainians without exception. This is the forecast for the current year of Kyiv astrologers. More realistic, however, is another scenario from “narrow specialists” in the agricultural sector. Interruptions in the delivery of mineral fertilizers to the fields, primarily from neighboring Belarus, with which economic ties President Vladimir Zelensky ordered to be put into the “deep freeze” mode, a sharp decrease in sown areas in the “chernozem” southern regions will be exacerbated by a banal shortage of workers in the agricultural sector.

As MK previously wrote, the three northern regions of the republic – Kiev, Chernihiv and Sumy – after a “goodwill gesture” in the form of last year’s organized withdrawal of Russian troops, turned out to be “explosive”. 60% of arable land, stuffed with mines, remains unsuitable for spring sowing

In addition, there is an acute shortage of personnel in the farms. First of all, the mechanics of agricultural enterprises are “shaved into the Armed Forces of Ukraine”: according to military registration specialties, they are all tankers, drivers of armored personnel carriers and other moving pieces of iron.

The heads of agricultural enterprises and agricultural holdings are forced to distribute the volume of work among specialists unsuitable for military service. In addition to these, internally displaced persons are invited and trained. And they also count on the many years of experience of their former cadres who have gone on a well-deserved rest.

But sometimes you spend time and money on training qualified machine operators, and they suddenly cancel their “booking”. You have to look for new people, start their training from scratch.

Modern Ukrainian legislation provides for the “booking” of 50 percent of agricultural workers only if they are used by farms cultivating an area of ​​at least 1,000 hectares. Small agricultural enterprises are getting out, as best they can …

Another important problem of Ukrainian farmers is the pollution of land and water bodies due to bombing and rocket attacks on oil refineries. Oil and chemicals seep into the soil, run off into rivers and lakes. Analysis of soil samples taken from the sites of ammunition explosions in the Kharkiv region has already shown an increased concentration of heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. Such metals inhibit the development of plants.

Will the price of Ukrainian grain crops rise in the coming years? I’m afraid she will fall: because of the increased risk of “catching” a bunch of all sorts of sores when eating all this highly toxic “magnificence”.

Within Ukraine itself, bread began to rise in price little by little. In the past 2022, this food product was located “at the head” of the table of the most volatile goods in terms of price. The price of bread and bakery products grew by 30.3% at the end of the year. The reason for the rise in price is not at all the quality or the increase in the cost of wheat. If there were no state regulation of bread prices in the country, Zelensky and the company would have been “terrorized” by the organizers of the “bread riots” with millions of disgruntled fellow citizens. Craft breads, which are not social goods in Ukraine, are growing in price almost every month.

Having finally understood what the disruption of the spring sowing campaign could mean for Zelensky’s supporters, the pro-presidential Servant of the People faction introduced a bill to expand the program of preferential lending to Ukrainian farmers. So that they can acquire seed material in time, fuel and fertilizers that have risen in price at times. Both are now purchased not at an acceptable price in the Republic of Belarus, but in EU member countries where market mechanisms operate. It is proposed to raise the maximum loan from the current 90 million hryvnia to 180 million hryvnia. (from 185,400,000 rubles to 370,800,000 rubles). The deputies are convinced that the availability of such amounts to farmers will make it possible to carry out the sowing campaign and not reduce the volume of agricultural production. For in the past 2022, agricultural products accounted for more than half of Ukraine’s total exports.