{"id":1636165,"date":"2022-09-08T11:34:59","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T15:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1636165"},"modified":"2022-09-08T11:35:41","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T15:35:41","slug":"even-with-un-deal-ukraine-faces-long-haul-to-shift-grain-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/even-with-un-deal-ukraine-faces-long-haul-to-shift-grain-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"Even with UN deal, Ukraine faces long haul to shift grain mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Feven-with-un-deal-ukraine-faces-long-haul-to-shift-grain-mountain%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1636165&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>By Jonathan Saul, Nigel Hunt and Pavel Polityuk<\/p>\n<p>KYIV (Reuters) \u2013     Too few ships are arriving in Ukraine to quickly clear mountains of grain built up over months of war despite a U.N.-backed sea corridor, threatening to drive up global food prices and leave the country\u2019s cash-strapped farmers struggling to plant crops.<\/p>\n<p>President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday triggered fears that Russia could withdraw support for the sea corridor after he accused Kyiv of using it to export to the European Union and Turkey rather than poor nations that most need the food, particularly in Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Even if the agreement holds, the dangers of sending ships into the heavily mined Black Sea, along with a lack of large vessels and the exclusion of a major port, means volumes transported are well below Ukraine\u2019s goal of doubling farm exports to at least 6 million tonnes by October. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the moment, we do not send our ships to Ukrainian ports because we don\u2019t believe it is safe,\u201d Alexander Saverys, chief executive of Belgian headquartered shipping group CMB, which shipped from Ukraine prior to the war, told Reuters. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe situation on the ground is still very volatile and there is a clear danger to our seafarers\u2019 lives. There is also a real risk of being stuck in port.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The sea corridor was facilitated by the United Nations and Turkey in July. According to the latest data from the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) in Istanbul, which oversees the deal, some 2 million tonnes of grain \u2013 mainly corn \u2013 has been exported since the first ship sailed on Aug 1.<\/p>\n<p>At the current rate of exports,\u00a0it would take around six months to ship the rest of the grain left over from last year\u2019s harvest through the three ports included in the pact \u2013 Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi \u2013 with the help of rail exports, according to Reuters\u2019 calculations. <\/p>\n<p>By then, another mountain of grain will have built up from the current harvest, including 20 million tonnes of wheat and Ukraine\u2019s corn crop which is expected to total around 30 million tonnes.<\/p>\n<p>Unable to sell, farmers do not have the money to invest in their fields, meaning winter wheat planting is on track to be about a third below last year, said Denys Marchuk, deputy chair of the Ukrainian Agrarian Council.<\/p>\n<p>That could extend a global food crisis which the U.N. initiative had sought to mitigate. Food prices \u2013 which spiked after Russia\u2019s Feb. 24 invasion \u2013 eased following the agreement, but Ukraine\u2019s wheat has still not been reaching its traditional clients in Africa at anywhere near normal volumes.<\/p>\n<p>Somalia, which has directly received just one 28,500 tonne cargo of wheat under the agreement according to U.N. data, is entering a famine caused by years of drought made worse by the surge in global food prices, the United Nations said on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Dmitry Skornyakov, chief executive of Ukraine farm company HarvEast, said the sea corridor was \u201cnot game changing\u201d in part because prices being paid for grain in Ukraine were not high enough to make massive exports immediately viable.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, he said, his company was cutting its planted wheat area and drilling no barley or rye this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will definitely see less wheat and if we wait until spring and the situation remains as it is we will see a dramatic decrease in corn,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>SHIPS TOO SMALL<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine\u2019s farming minister Mykola Solsky told Reuters last week that agricultural exports could rise to 6 million-6.5 million tonnes in October, double the volume seen in July. <\/p>\n<p>Ports in Ukraine, a top 5 global grain exporter before the war, used to ship about 5-6 million tonnes of grain per month, according to analysis from logistics platform project44. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cUkraine would require mammoth shipping capacity to make up for lost time,\u201d said Josh Brazil, vice-president for global supply chain insights at project44. Reaching previous shipment levels would require four 50,000 tonnes vessels every day, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the vessels departing Ukraine are much smaller.<\/p>\n<p>Data from maritime and commodities data platform Shipfix, shows an average cargo size of around 20,000 tonnes.<\/p>\n<p>Alex Stuart-Grumbar, of Shipfix, said successful journeys made under the agreement so far could provide momentum for shipments to accelerate. However, at current cargo sizes, approximately a thousand voyages would be required clear the backlog, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Larger ships carrying over 60,000 tonnes of grains, known as panamaxes, which would have traded Black Sea routes, have been redeployed to other regions including North and South America. It would take weeks to reposition them as grain export seasons there are underway, shipping industry sources say, with a big crop in Brazil tying up many vessels.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are, at the moment, unable as yet to position any of our assets in the Black Sea and therefore are unable to look at this business,\u201d Khalid Hashim, managing director of leading Thai listed dry bulk shipping company Precious Shipping, told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>MYKOLAIV UNDER FIRE<\/p>\n<p>The grains initiative excludes Mykolaiv, the country\u2019s second-largest grain terminal according to 2021 shipments data, hampering its ability to restore exports to pre-invasion levels.<\/p>\n<p>Grain silos in Mykolaiv were hit by Russian shelling of the city on Aug. 31, underscoring the dangers.    <\/p>\n<p>Some marine insurers have provided coverage to enable grains to set sail from Ukraine\u2019s ports, but shipping companies are still very concerned.        <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is one thing to be insured against a calamity, it is another to put our crew and our ship potentially in harm\u2019s way,\u201d said CMB\u2019s Saverys, whose group has a dry bulk division. <\/p>\n<p>U.S. listed Genco, another leading dry bulk shipping company, said it was looking at how to go about working in Ukraine. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are challenges with insurance, most importantly keeping our crew safe and there are a lot of other logistics issues in terms of the convoys and load times,\u201d Genco\u2019s chief executive and president John Wobensmith told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are not quite there yet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Even when last year\u2019s crop has been shipped, it will take a number of weeks to clean port silos in preparation for the arrival of this year\u2019s harvest, an important step to limit the threat posed by pests.<\/p>\n<p>Viktor Vyshnov, deputy head of Ukraine\u2019s Shipping Administration, said more use of the corridor was needed to bring down insurance costs but acknowledged that the war was constraining shipowners.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome of them are still afraid for their ships,\u201d he said.    <\/p>\n<p>The bottlenecks have raised the cost of even getting harvest to the ports and storage silos, an issue farming minister Solsky acknowledged was hindering exports.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur main and biggest problem\u2026is that our demand for logistics is several times higher than the supply,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Jonathan Saul and Nigel Hunt in London and Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv; Additional reporting by Ana Mano and Roberto Samora in Sao Paulo; Editing by Veronica Brown and Frank Jack Daniel)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2746435\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI87085-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI87085-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2746439\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI87082-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI87082-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2746440\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI87083-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI87083-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jonathan Saul, Nigel Hunt and Pavel Polityuk KYIV (Reuters) \u2013 Too few ships are arriving in Ukraine to quickly clear mountains of grain built up over months of war<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1636165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1636165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1636165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1636165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1636165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}