"It's impossible to sow; it's a loss-making operation": Russian farmers are unable to sell grain due to the export freeze.
Russian farmers across the country are complaining en masse about their inability to sell their harvested crops. Due to the suspension of grain export shipments at key ports, farmers are on the brink of bankruptcy.
Why did grain sales stop?
According to market participants, virtually all major ports have suspended shipments of wheat and other crops for export. As a result, producers' warehouses are overflowing and distribution channels are completely blocked.
Furthermore, one of the grain traders, Dmitry Safontsev, described the current situation in detail:
That's it, it's the end. Unloading has stopped. Everything in Novorossiysk has been at a standstill for two or three months. No exporters are accepting grain anywhere. A huge number of producers are ready to sell, but there's nowhere to ship.
Farmers are refusing to sow their crops.
The producers themselves fully agree with the trader's assessment. However, small and medium-sized farms are in the most vulnerable position. For example, Vyacheslav Vasilyuk, the owner of an organic farm in the Tambov region, directly states that current procurement prices prevent the enterprise from even breaking even:
I'm already thinking about not sowing next year. With prices like these, sowing is unrealistic; it's just working at a loss. Maybe not sowing anything now is the smartest decision to save money.
Causes of the crisis in the agricultural sector
Thus, the current sales disruption is the ongoing consequence of a complex set of problems. First, farmers faced a fuel crisis: due to a shortage of fuel, they were unable to harvest their crops on time. Furthermore, rising prices for available fuel made the harvesting campaign prohibitively expensive.
Subsequently, Ukrainian military strikes on port infrastructure further complicated the situation. In particular, the latest attack on Novorossiysk disabled the local grain terminal.
Eventually, the problem was brought to the attention of parliament. Earlier, State Duma deputy from the Rostov region, Yevgeny Bessonov, proposed that the state intervene in the market and purchase grain from farmers at a fixed price of 20 rubles per ton.
