Articles Tagged with ''russia''

Ukraine’s farmers are preparing to begin this year’s problematic summer harvest on the 75% of fields not under Russian occupation, but producers, analysts and political leaders are preoccupied with the broader question of where the grain will be stored as efforts falter to reopen exports through Black Sea ports.

The Philippines, citing the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on world grain supplies and prices, has reduced its tariff on corn imports from 35% down to 5% and that has opened new opportunities for U.S. corn farmers.

The war in Ukraine has laid bare the fact that agriculture is the key to national security. It’s a lesson that world leaders are taking to heart as they scramble to lessen global reliance on key sources of food and fertilizer, but it’s unclear if it will be too late to stop the slide from food crises to famine in some of the poorest and least developed countries.

An agreement to ban food export restrictions could be in reach for the World Trade Organization after years of failing to produce a major achievement.

Russia is doing whatever it can to stop Ukraine from supplying some of the poorest nations with its wheat, corn and sunflower seed oil, effectively using “hunger as a weapon of war,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during his participation at the G7 summit this weekend in Germany.

Ag ministers for the Group of Seven nations this weekend pledged action to counter the rising cost and scarcity of fertilizer, said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was at the meeting in Germany.

India on Saturday banned wheat exports in efforts to protect its domestic supply and that’s drawn the criticism of the U.S. and its fellow G7 member countries, says U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Ukrainian farmers will begin harvesting millions of acres of winter wheat in July, but if Ukraine is unable to export it, the country’s economy will likely collapse and the hundreds of millions of people that depend on receiving that grain will suffer even worse than they are now, United Nations World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley said Wednesday.

Ukrainian farmers are short on diesel, fertilizer and manpower. They’ve been bombed, occupied, had their fields mined and silos and tractors destroyed by the Russian military. They've even had their grain robbed and sold overseas while they themselves are struggling to export because of a Russian blockade at ports, sources tell Agri-Pulse.