Volodymyr Onishchuk looks at the rented field where he plants wheat and barley, in Bashtanka, Ukraine, on June 24. (Serhiy Morgunov for The Washington Post) Comment on this story Comment BASHTANKA, Ukraine — The morning Russian tanks and troops stormed Ukraine’s border, Volodymyr Onishchuk’s wheat stuck. He had delivered about $100,000 to a storage facility in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Mykolaiv on February 23, but by February 24 – when the ship carrying his harvest was due to set sail – Russian troops were on the ground and the warships remained menacingly off the Ukrainian coast. That day, Onishchuk wasn’t too concerned that he hadn’t been paid yet. Repelling Russia was uppermost in his mind. But then a week passed—and then a month, and then four months—with Ukraine’s main ports remaining blockaded by the Russian fleet. Not only was he short of the money from his last return, but a new crop was almost ready to be sent to market, with no way of profitably transporting it. And future crops were uncertain. “If we don’t sell this wheat now and cover our expenses, tomorrow we simply won’t be able to plant,” he said. Farmers across Ukraine are increasingly feeling the financial pressure of Russia’s Black Sea blockade, and the sector’s economic collapse is affecting food security around the world. Ukraine accounted for 10% of global wheat exports in 2021, according to the United Nations. The high cost of exporting grain via alternative routes — by truck or train to a western neighbor or by barge through smaller ports on the Danube River — means farmers are losing money, they said. Many farmers are refusing to export the current crop at all — unless a diplomatic solution is found to unblock Black Sea ports. Some said they would store their grain in silos for now. But without money coming in, they may not be able to harvest this autumn – threatening to dramatically reduce the output of one of the world’s biggest grain producers for years to come. “We feed the world, but we also have to feed ourselves,” said Oleksandr Chumak, a farmer in the southern Odesa region. Latest updates from the Ukraine war Chumak and Onishchuk said that while world wheat prices have soared to more than $400 a ton, wheat traders are offering them about $60 a ton because of the high cost of getting grain out of the country — from expensive fuel to long delays at the border. Onishchuk, who rents his land and has to pay about 40 employees, said that only covers about half of his expenses. Ukraine has worked to improve other export routes, but each has its own headaches. Farmers and government officials said most of the grain now goes out via the Danube River, where it flows to Romania’s Black Sea ports of Sulina and Constanta. But Romanians are struggling to handle the volume of grain Ukraine needs to export, creating costly waits, officials said. Most troubling, Western countries helping Ukraine move grain will soon have their hands full with their own crops. Some grain has been loaded onto westbound train cars, but the European Union and Ukraine use different gauges of track, so the grain must be moved from car to car at the border — another time-consuming and expensive task. Ukraine will have plenty of grain for its own consumption, but Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said Russia was trying to create another Holodomor, on a global scale – a reference to the famine of the 1930s, when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union Union. “They want to introduce this to the whole world,” Kubrakov said of the Russians. “They want the international community to lift some of the sanctions and then the grain can go. So they’re basically holding people hostage all over the world. This is terrorism.” “Even after all our efforts, we understand that we can only export about 20 percent of what we need,” Kubrakov added. Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi said he expects Ukraine to have about 60 million tons of grain for export this year, including some of last year’s harvest that has not yet been moved. But Ukraine currently exports 2 million tonnes of grain a month – only about a third of the amount in previous years. “Many of us don’t have enough capital to pay wages — and I’m not even talking about taxes,” said Chumak, the farmer in the Odessa region. “We just need to destroy the entire Russian fleet and then everything will be fine,” he said. “Long-range missile systems will be cheaper than solving these logistics problems.” On Onishchuk’s farm in the Mykolaiv region, he walked through fields of grain in brown slippers and pointed to a large crater where a rocket fell in March. This town of Bastanka was the site of a fierce battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces before the Russians retreated in mid-March. Farming on Onishchuk’s plots had to stop until a deminer could control the entire area – more than 5,000 acres. He has since invested in a large metal safe to store important documents, such as the land lease, in case there is more bombing. US-supplied HIMARS changes the calculus on Ukraine’s frontline Onishchuk typically sells 5,000 tons of grain a year, a relatively modest output. Unlike some of Ukraine’s largest producers, it does not have a large steel cylindrical grain bin, which can store dry grain for years. The cold brick warehouses he uses for storage hold fewer grains and only for about six months. Solskyi said the Department of Agriculture is working to provide farmers with other storage options, including large plastic silo bags. But with Onishchuk still waiting for his last shipment to leave the port of Mykolaiv, he had to face how much longer he can afford to wait and whether his 17-year-old business might be doomed. He will not sell this last harvest if the price remains this low. Will it plant in the fall? “I’ll let you know,” he said. “I still have hopes. If I had no hope, I would have left the country.” Lesia Prokopenko, Kostiantyn Khudov and David L. Stern in Kyiv contributed to this report.
