Global Food Supply Concerns Over Ukraine’s Scarce Wheat Plantings

Ukraine, one of the world’s top wheat exporters, faces a scarce wheat planting that could potentially affect the global food supply.

According to analysts, Ukraine’s harvest was down 40% to 19 million tons of wheat this year, compared to the previous 33 million tons last season.

With Ukraine still being ravaged by war and economic hardship, it is expected that there will be an inevitable drop in production in 2023. This production drop would surely spark a race to secure grain, especially since Ukraine has many key buyers, including Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt, among many others.

The scarce harvest in Ukraine is also expected to affect some of the poorest countries in the world.

In response to the possibility of another poor harvest in Ukraine, the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) issued a warning that markets would become volatile and high prices would remain as the scarce harvest would prevent the global stocks from recovering for at least another year.

Farmers Save Cost by Reducing Crop Inputs

Another blow to Ukraine’s production prospects was the cash-stripped farmers that decided to cut inputs such as fertilizers in an effort to save costs.

The Chief Executive of Ukraine farm company HarvEast noted, “Everyone is saving money and planting with minimum costs (including less fertilizer use), which leads to a very significant drop in yield next year.”

Senior economist at the International Grains Council, Alexander Karavaytsev, also stated, “It is understood that soils in Ukraine have some buffer owing to investment by farmers in previous years, and Chernozems (black soils) are the world’s most fertile soils.”

“Still, quality can be affected by persistent reduced fertilizer application rates,” Karavaytsey added.

Along with the ongoing war, farmers in Ukraine receive very low prices due to the difficulty and high cost of transporting crops.

In the data provided by the Ukrainian government, farmers had sown only 3.6 million hectares of winter wheat, down by 40% from the 6.09 million a year ago.

“It’s a triple effect of weather, economic and technical factors (such as the inability to access fields),” an analyst commented.