Over the past week, farmers sowed 210.3 thou hectares of grains and legumes compared to 66.6 thou hectares a week earlier, with Ternopil region leading the way with 47.2 thou hectares, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy reported on Friday.
According to its data, as of March 23, the sowing campaign is already underway in 18 regions of Ukraine, while a week ago it was in 10.
It is noted that since the beginning of this campaign, all categories of farms have sown 293 thousand hectares of grain and leguminous crops, of which 76.1 thousand hectares (26 thousand hectares a week earlier) – spring wheat, 168.1 thousand hectares (44.2 thousand hectares) – spring barley, 35.3 thousand hectares (12 thousand hectares) – peas and 14.2 thousand (0.5 thousand hectares) – oats.
The Ministry clarified that since the beginning of the sowing campaign, farmers in Ternopil region have planted the largest amount of grain and legumes – 67.6 thousand hectares.
Agrarians in Vinnytsia, Volyn, Rivne, Khmelnytsky and Cherkasy regions have started sowing sugar beet, while farmers in Odesa region have started sowing sunflower, the ministry added.
As reported, as of March 25 last year, 150 thousand hectares of agricultural areas were sown in 11 regions, and in 2021, as of the same date, 106 thousand hectares were sown.
As of March 21, 2023, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy forecasted the area under grain and leguminous crops for the 2023 harvest in the territory controlled by Ukraine at 10.24 mln ha, which is 1.41 mln ha or 12.1% less than in 2022.
According to the data and forecasts of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, winter wheat plantings amounted to 4166 thou hectares (-834 thou hectares y-o-y), winter barley – 536 thou hectares (-255 thou hectares).
The agency expects spring wheat to be planted on 285 thou hectares (+67 thou hectares), spring barley – on 1041 thou hectares (+111 thou hectares), corn – on 3618 thou hectares (-451 thou hectares).
Ukrainian agrarians have applied to the authorities of the Republic of Poland with a request to lay a broad-gauge railway line (with a gauge of 1520 mm) across its territory, which will connect the port of Polish Gdansk with the Ukrainian and Lithuanian railway networks to export agricultural products and ensure strategically important imports through western borders of Ukraine.
The corresponding appeal to the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda and its Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was sent by the leading Ukrainian agrarian associations: the All-Ukrainian Agrarian Council (VAR), the Agrarian Union of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Agrarian Business Club, the All-Ukrainian Association of Communities, the Union of Poultry Breeders of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation, reportedly on the VAR website on Friday.
According to the appeal, one of the largest and closest European ports to Ukraine is the port of Klaipeda (Lithuania), which has significant free transshipment capacities. However, due to differences in the gauge between Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic countries, there is a need to reload the contents of wagons at border crossings between countries or rearrange wagon bogies, which does not allow to fully realize the export-import potential of the port of Klaipeda.
In turn, the use of vehicles or containers as an alternative to railway transportation is poorly suited for transporting bulk bulk cargo (coal, ore, grain, metal) over long distances and increases their cost to an uncompetitive level. In addition, in the case of using container terminals, the capacity of the railway line will be limited by their capacity, which will also prevent full use of the potential.
“In our opinion, the laying of a railway line with a gauge of 1520 mm across the territory of the Republic of Poland, which will connect the Ukrainian and Lithuanian railway networks, as well as connect the port of Gdansk to them for the transport of goods and passengers, will solve the above-mentioned problems,” the appeal of the Ukrainian farmers.
At the same time, it is emphasized that such a logistical path will give significant positive financial and economic effects for Poland and Ukraine, not only due to an increase in export-import capacities, but also due to the unification of the economic space of Poland, the Baltic countries and Ukraine.
Such a project can be implemented through the reconstruction of the existing railway network and the construction of a combined track, or the construction of a separate railway branch.
As reported, in June 2022, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Yaroslav Kaczynski said that the issue of building this broad-gauge railway track had already been tentatively approved by the Polish and Ukrainian governments.
In early June, the VAR already proposed to build 300 km of broad-gauge railway tracks in Poland for direct grain deliveries to the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda, which would allow not to overload the contents of wagons at the Ukraine-Poland and Poland-Lithuania border crossings due to the difference in railway gauge in these countries.
On September 15, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine signed a memorandum of cooperation with one of the world’s largest databases, AgroChart, containing information on prices and statistics of agricultural markets since 1970.
As reported on the agency’s website on Friday, the signing of the document will provide the Ukrainian agro-industrial complex with up-to-date information on the Ukrainian market situation, assessment of export opportunities and tracking changes affecting the export and import of Ukrainian agricultural products.
“Today, more than ever, it is important to provide our farmers with reliable information about the functioning of the markets for grain, oilseeds and feed ingredients, up-to-date analytics of export supply and import demand by country, prices, etc. All this will help them make informed decisions,” – the words of the Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy for Digital Development, Digital Transformations and Digitalization Denis Bashlyk are quoted in the message.
He said that in the future it is possible to integrate AgroChart databases with the State Agrarian Register (SAR), but this will not happen in the near future.
2,740 farmers from Ukraine have already applied for participation in the program financed by the budgetary support of the European Union through the State Agrarian Register (SAR), according to the website of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food on Friday.
Farmers with a land bank of 1 to 120 hectares (with payment of up to 3.1 thousand UAH/ha), and owners of 3 to 100 cows (with payment of up to 5, 3 thousand UAH/head).
According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, a total of 2,299 applications were submitted for payments in the first direction, and 437 in the second.
The agency recalled that the acceptance of applications for assistance in the two above areas will last until November 15, 2022.
At the same time, only agricultural producers registered in the GAR and meeting its criteria can be participants in the program. Currently, 11,000 users have already registered with the GAR, who can access information about existing state support programs in real time and apply for it online.
As reported, GAR is an automated electronic system available to all agricultural producers, regardless of the form of management. With the help of the registry, it is planned to provide public services, simplify access to bank financing and loan guarantee programs, as well as introduce targeted government support programs and evaluate their effectiveness.
The project is being implemented in coordination with the State Geocadastre, the Ministry of Justice and with the assistance of the World Bank and EU project “Support for transparent land management in Ukraine”, as well as the USAID Agricultural and Rural Development Program.
In the last three years, the EU has been supporting the introduction of GAR in Ukraine. With technical and financial assistance from the EU, the government has developed the software and carried out two pilot implementations ahead of a nationwide launch in August 2022.
Farmers of Odesa region had already harvested almost 2 million tonnes of grain, Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesman for Odesa regional military administration, said.
“We have one more front, we should not forget about it, and it is also one of the main ones – this is the agrarian front. Today, our grain growers have already harvested almost 2 million tonnes [of grain]. The northern parts of Odesa region have joined the harvest. We understand that if there is grain [and there will be!], there is flour. And Odesa region and other regions of our state, and, accordingly, entire Ukraine will have this resource,” he said at a briefing at the Ukraine Media Center on Monday.
At the same time, Bratchuk is convinced that the grain reserves in Odesa region will be sufficient for Ukraine to be able to export it to other countries.
In 2022, Ukrainian agricultural producers attracted 26,620 loans totaling UAH 47.74 million under the Affordable Loans 5–7–9 program, the website of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food reported on Thursday.
The report clarifies that from mid-March to May 31, 2022, a special program was in place for preferential lending for sowing crops, under which farmers could raise up to UAH 60 million at 0% per annum, and 80% was guaranteed by the state. In total, during the period of its work, agricultural entrepreneurs received UAH 38.51 billion in loans. Since June 1, applications for lending to the agricultural sector have been accepted within the framework of the usual 5-7-9 program.
With its help, small and medium-sized agricultural entrepreneurs receive loans for the purchase of fixed assets and reimbursement of any expenses associated with the implementation of agricultural activities. The program is also aimed at creating jobs in enterprises.
In total, for the period June 1-July 21, Ukrainian banks allocated UAH 9.19 billion to 8.53 thousand agrarians and farmers, including UAH 443.8 thousand under the portfolio guarantee program.
The leaders in terms of lending for this period were Kyiv – UAH 1.540 billion, Khmelnytsky – UAH 1 billion, Kirovohrad – UAH 0.66 billion, Vinnitsa and Poltava – UAH 0.61 billion each.
The largest lending volumes for the specified period came from: Raiffeisen Bank – UAH 3.29 billion, Oschadbank – UAH 1.71 billion, PrivatBank – UAH 1.18 billion, Ukrgasbank – UAH 0.91 billion, Ukreximbank – UAH 0.61 billion.
“The government and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy are well aware of how important it is for farmers to receive preferential loans during the war. Therefore, we are working on launching new credit lines for farmers, and we also expect that in the near future the conditions for paying the body of the loan on preferential lending will be extended from 6 to 12 months,” the ministry quotes its first deputy minister, Taras Vysotsky.
