Ukrainians may be left without bread – more than 10 million tons of wheat exported from the country

Traders have exported from Ukraine about 75% of food wheat of the new harvest, risking to leave the country’s residents without bread in 2022, the Dzerkalo Tyzhnya weekly says

At the beginning of July the participants of the Ukrainian grain market signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the marketing year 2021/2022 to fix the export limits for individual grain crops. Rodion Rybchynskyy, chairman of the union “Mukomoly Ukrainy”, stressed the need to sign an addendum to the Memorandum, which will oblige to keep quantitative and qualitative records of grain.

“Even during the harvesting season, we began to receive data that the quality of wheat this year is very low. It is mosaically scattered all over Ukraine. In some regions there is no wheat of the 2nd class at all. The result, indeed, was not cheerful. According to surveyors’ estimates, only 42 per cent of the harvested wheat can be regarded as food grain, while the remaining 58 per cent is fodder grain”, –  Rybchynskyy said.

According to him, Ukrainian farmers harvested about 32.5 million tons of wheat, but after cleaning, processing and other operations there will be about 30 million tons, of which only 12.6-13.0 million tons can be used in food production. Rybchynskyy said that despite the large harvest this year, only about 5.7m tonnes of wheat of uncertain quality will remain in the country.

The director-general of Ukrhlebprom, Oleksandr Vasylchenko, said that official Kiev threatens the country’s food security. He reminded that the Ukrainian authorities have completely forgotten about the 2003 crisis, when critical volumes of wheat were withdrawn from the country and the following year was extremely poor.

“What to bake bread from and guarantee food security? We need to make adjustments to the wheat export limits. It is necessary to establish the possible volumes of exports of Grade 2 wheat. The prospect of a lack of food wheat or a shortage of it will lead to a deterioration in flour quality and will consequently affect the quality of baked goods”, – Vasylchenko summed up.

Ukrainians may be left without bread – more than 10 million tons of wheat exported from the country