In Ukraine’s restored grain trade, relief for farmers – and the world

Farmer Fedor Zlatov has to shout to make himself heard above the front-loader dumping load after load of his family’s wheat into a truck for transport to the recently reopened Ukrainian Black Sea port of Yuzhnyi.

“In the situation of this war, it would be the death of Ukraine’s grain business without this agreement,” he says, referring to the deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July to allow safe passage of Ukrainian (and Russian) grains and other agricultural products through the Black Sea to a hungry world.

“But even in this crisis we don’t think only of our own benefit,” he adds. “This war is causing new problems for people in Africa and Arab countries, and we won’t forget that.

“In those countries like everywhere else,” he says, “you can live without the very expensive foods, but you cannot live without bread.”

Mr. Zlatov helps his father, Mykolai Zlatov, run the family farm, encompassing 18,000 hectares (44,000 acres) of their own and rented farmland across the Odesa region of southern Ukraine.

With three grain silos, five metal single-story grain storehouses, and an equipment yard brimming with iconic green John Deere tractors and harvesters – not to mention a facility for making the area’s trademark brinza goat cheese – the Zlatovs were doing well, while also playing their part in making Ukraine one of the world’s indispensable breadbaskets.

Then came the war.

“Russia paralyzed us, but I will not give up,” says the elder Mr. Zlatov, as he directs several farm employees to sweep the wheat in one storehouse into higher piles for easier loading.

Yes, Russian bombs took out a nearby highway bridge critical for getting grain to ports. The war scattered some of Mr. Zlatov’s five children and 13 grandchildren to Romania and Bulgaria – the latter being where his ancestors migrated from 200 years ago to farm along the Black Sea.

And for five months Russian threats idled the ports Ukraine’s farms depend on to export their produce.

But none of that has stopped the Zlatovs.

“We are farmers, so this is not just about money for us,” the elder Mr. Zlatov says. “We know we have a special responsibility,” he adds, now echoing his son, “because everybody needs bread.”

Buzz of activity

In no small measure because of the U.N.-brokered grain export deal signed July 22 in Istanbul, many of Ukraine’s farms are buzzing with activity once again. Moreover, the related activities and infrastructure required for getting grains, sunflowers, and other products to world markets – the trains and trucks for overland transport and the ports and cargo ships making use of the sea – are all in high gear.

With Black Sea ports reopened, trucks loaded with grains are lined up at port gates, recently snaking along the shoulders of highways for miles.

Since the deal’s signing, Ukraine has exported about 4 million tons of wheat and other agricultural products to ports in Egypt, Libya, India, Iran, China, South Korea, and Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia – the latter four especially important because food insecurity there is threatening to deteriorate further into famine, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program.

U.N. officials assert that the grain deal has already contributed to declines in global food prices, and that the risk of famine in some African countries in particular has eased somewhat because of the arrival of Ukrainian grains. Falling food prices also mean the World Food Program is able to buy more food for humanitarian distribution with the budget it has, officials say.

“Reintegrating [grains] and fertilizers into global markets [and] lowering global food prices so that vulnerable people everywhere could access affordable food was our main objective,” U.N. trade chief Rebeca Grynspan said at a Geneva press conference this month.

By returning Ukrainian grains to the global market and fueling decreases in global food prices, she said, the grain deal is “easing the pain ... for 1.6 billion people in the world that have been facing a cost-of-living rise, especially because of the increase in food prices.”

But no one is ready to declare victory in the effort to restore Ukraine to its position among the world’s top food suppliers.

Deal will expire

The 8 million tons of wheat exported so far this fiscal year is only about half the previous year’s exports. Moreover, the grain deal will expire 120 days after its signing, or sometime around Nov. 22. Without a renewal, grain shipments would likely cease, experts say, since ship owners and insurers would not run the risk of operating in a war zone without the deal’s guarantee of safe passage.

Then there is the war’s impact on Ukraine’s agricultural sector. A recent U.S.-sponsored study concluded that almost 15% of Ukraine’s crop storage capacity has either been destroyed, damaged, or seized by Russia since February.

Some farmers have had to abandon croplands sown with mines, while many farmworkers have either left to fight in the war or to relocate their families to safer areas.

And even as many world leaders are lauding the deal’s results, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his criticism, claiming it has not benefited Russian grain and fertilizer exports and that most of Ukraine’s exports have gone to the European Union and other wealthy markets instead of to poor, hungry countries.

Mr. Putin accused the West this month of “colonial behavior” by hoarding food supplies. What’s actually happening, some European trade experts say, is that Ukraine is benefiting from a European Union program to step up overland exports by train and truck.

Still, the comments heightened speculation that the besieged Russian leader might refuse to renew the grain deal. That prompted a spike in global wheat prices that had been trending downward.

At a food insecurity meeting at the U.N. last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken blasted as “misinformation” Moscow’s claims about the grain deal benefiting the West. “Grain and other food products are getting where they need to go,” he said, “to the countries most in need, predominately in the Global South.”

He also deemed as “urgent” the deal’s prompt renewal.

“Just doing our jobs”

In Ukraine, many of the truck drivers waiting for days to deliver loads of grain to the port of Yushnyi say they know little of the international grain deal or the rising global hunger the wheat they are delivering could help ease. But they are happy to be back at work.

“When the ports were not open, I was just sitting in the house, so this is much better, even if it does take me three or four days to get inside,” says Oleksii Maystrink, a self-employed trucker slowly nearing the Yushnyi port entrance with a load of barley.

Sporting a Puma t-shirt and flip-flops, Mr. Maystrink says he knows little about the international deal that reopened the ports. “All of us along here,” he says, motioning to the miles of idled trucks behind him, “we’re all just doing our jobs.”

Farther east along the same highway into the Mykolaiv region, farmer Serhii Kharoschiak sounds a very different note, revealing deep awareness of the grain deal that reopened the ports – and of the critical role Ukraine’s farmers like him play in feeding the world.

“Of course it’s important to have the ports open again,” he says, “but we also see how this agreement has become another part of the international game going on here,” referring to how he says Mr. Putin is using the deal to disparage Ukraine and its allies while advancing his own purposes.

“The truth is that farming was already difficult in this region, but the war has put many more farmers out of business,” says Mr. Kharoschiak, who with his wife and son continues to produce wheat, barley, rapeseed, and sunflowers – along with a new side venture into geese and farmed fish.

Noting that the war caused a number of farmers around him to abandon their fields, Mr. Kharoschiak says a need to make a living plus the farmer’s calling to feed people combine to keep him going.

“We feed our own country, and now we feel this new responsibility to help our army in this war however we can,” he says, noting his family has donated some of their farm’s produce to soldiers in the area.

Then he acknowledges with what sounds like pride the critical role Ukraine farmers continue to play in feeding the world.

Standing with his wife, Tetiana, in a soon-to-be-harvested sunflower field, he says, “For us there is no difference between children in Ukraine and children in Africa. We feed them as our children as well.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.