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After more than a year of impressive European unity in support of Ukraine, the seeds of discord are being piled in the barn of Robert Vieru, a Romanian farmer with 500 tons of wheat and 250 tons of sunflower seeds now unable to sell because of cut prices. Ukrainian competition.
A glut of Ukrainian cereals and other products has almost halved the price for the results of Mr. Vieru’s labor and left the farmers across Eastern and Central Europe – and the government that, most of them face elections this year or next – caught between solidarity with Ukraine and their own survival.
“I am sad for them, but my heart is broken for myself,” Mr Vieru said of the Ukrainians living near the border in Romania’s Danube delta, as he opened the sliding doors of the concrete cage, filled to capacity. with items that could not be sold last year. harvest.
Prices have been driven so low by the flood of cheap food from Ukraine, he said, that selling would mean getting less than he paid to produce his crops.
The suffering of Mr. Vieru, who was welcomed by farmers in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria, flowed from the unintended consequences of good intentions.
Market forces, driven by profiteering, have turned ambitious efforts by the European Union to help Ukraine export crops and reduce what the UN described last year as an “unprecedented global hunger crisis” into a source of political division and economic distress in Europe. Eastern countries used to be communist.
The mess hasn’t eliminated strong public support for Ukraine, at least not yet, but it has created an opening for right-wing groups that favor Russia, causing serious friction in the European bloc and mood in the once-fortified region. usually unflagging support for Ukraine. The European Commission’s proposal of 100 million euros to compensate farmers has done little to ease these tensions.
With the exception of Hungary, whose populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, has often sided with Russia, the countries most likely to face the competition include Ukraine’s strongest European ally. Poland, Romania and Slovakia have provided weapons and military training.
But over the past week, all five countries have imposed strict bans on Ukrainian wheat imports, with only Romania stopping short of an outright ban.
“We are the last people standing,” Romania’s transport minister, Sorin Grindeanu, said in an interview.
Moscow, meanwhile, has threatened not to renew its own Black Sea grain deal if the Group of 7 moves to block exports to Russia. On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov met with António Guterres, the UN secretary general, to discuss the agreement, which expires on May 18.
When the European bloc announced last June that it was lifting tariffs and other barriers on Ukrainian agricultural products, the move was hailed as a bold response to Russia’s blockade and bombing of Ukraine’s main ports on the Black and Azov seas. The disruption has fueled fears that, cut off from Ukraine’s breadbasket, countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia could starve.
To bypass the blocked sea routes, Europe created an elaborate program to create alternative routes from Ukraine involving roads, Danube Delta barges and trains.
The plan is overwhelming. This helped get millions of tons of Ukrainian grain to the global market, reducing prices and preventing starvation in other countries. But the flood of Ukrainian food into nearby countries like Romania, which is a major grain producer, is hurting local farmers. They cannot compete with the supply from Ukraine, there are no expensive restrictions and quality control demands imposed by the European Union.
“We can’t compete with that price. Nobody can compete,” said Bogdan Dediu, owner of a family farm in Galati County on the Danube. “Of course we want to help Ukraine. But we also have families and children to support. Unlike Mr. Vieru, he sold his crops after last year’s harvest – before the price went down – but still considers himself “a collateral damage of the war.”
When prices fell, transportation and other costs increased as Ukrainian grain was poured into the main river port for the farming area of Galati County. Shipments of Ukrainian grain last year through the port of Galati increased more than 90 times compared to 2021.
The port rarely handled Ukrainian grain until the European Union put in two million euros to repair a long, disused broad-gauge railway so that trains from Ukraine and Moldova, which use different tracks, could transport grain directly.
From there, most of the grain must be moved by barge through inland waterways to the Black Sea port of Constanta for shipment to Africa and elsewhere.
Most of them enter the Romanian domestic market.
Marcela-Daniela Costea, director of the Galati river port, said that large quantities of grain are stored for weeks and even months by traders in dock silos controlled by outside companies. “I don’t know what happened,” he said.
Florin Ciolacu, executive director of the Romanian Farmers’ Club, a lobby group, said his country’s farmers had lost 3.5 billion euros since February last year due to low prices and higher production and transport costs.
Of the EU’s efforts to help Ukraine, he said: “The intention is good but the result is very bad.” Half of the grain designated for transit through Romania under the European program, he said, has remained in the country.
By selling Ukrainian grain locally, traders also increase their profits by avoiding shipping costs and long waits at overloaded ports.
Mr. Vieru, the farmer, cursed the profiteers for ruining his business, but added that he could not blame them: “If I had honey on my finger, I would have licked it,” he said, using a Romanian phrase. describe the irresistible temptation.
Until Russia invaded in February last year, Ukraine sent almost no grain to Romania. In the past 14 months, it has sent 20 million tons there, according to Mr. Grindeanu, the Minister of Transportation. The impact on prices, he said, “created a huge scandal” and made farmers “very angry.”
They staged nationwide protests on April 7, using tractors to block traffic in several cities and across the border with Ukraine. More is in the works. Polish farmers have also demonstrated, leading to the resignation in early April of the Polish agriculture minister.
In a European region full of historical grievances and dormant disputes over territory, the flood of Ukrainian grain, if not checked, could wash away the political dikes founded on the revulsion of Russian aggression.
Romanian nationalist politicians, aided by sympathetic social media accounts and, some believe, controlled by Russia, caused uproar earlier this year after Ukraine announced it had violated a 1948 treaty, unilaterally dredging a small canal, the Bystre, at the mouth of the Danube River to allow sailed for ships carrying grain.
“We know they are in a difficult situation. There is a war. But the way they are doing this is not smart,” said the transport minister.
For Ms. Costea, director of the port of Galati, the dredging not only shows “disrespect” but also harms business. It helped open up the then-unnavigable Danube channel to many vessels, shifting traffic and revenue from Galati to Ukrainian-controlled river ports.
“They are living a nightmare there. That’s clear,” said Ms. Costea. However, she added, Romania also has interests that must be taken into account. “Everyone is interested in increasing their own profits,” she said.
Poland, Romania and Slovakia did not back down from providing weapons for the war against Russia, but domestic political and economic interests, often at odds with Ukraine, asserted themselves as elections in the three countries.
“We must help Ukraine until the defeat of Russia. This is non-negotiable,” said the Transport Minister. “But we also have to help our own people” – and prevent radical nationalists from exploiting their discontent ahead of next year’s parliamentary and presidential elections, he added. “If the nationalists have a field of speculation, they will increase their support.”
Scrambling to calm tempers and reverse what is denounced as “illegal” unilateral ban on importing Ukrainian grain by Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria, the executive arm of the European Union, the Commission, this week proposed what amounts to a ban, even if temporary. , alone.
Surrounded by complaints that have been blind to the impact, the Commission emphasized that “it also sees that there is tension affecting the agricultural community” and offered 100 million euros to compensate farmers, warning that only Russia will benefit from the inflammation of anger. .
But this year the sunflower and corn planting season is about to start and with many of last year’s crops still unsalable, farmers are getting desperate.
At a large farm run by the family-owned Dorin Group in Galati County, hangers that are usually empty this time of year are now filled with 1,000 tons of unsold corn. Storing large quantities of grain does not pose a serious problem during the winter, but that changes when the temperature rises and insects arrive.
Gabriela Buruiana, the farm’s commercial director, said that in the past traders “used to call every day” asking if they had grain to sell “but this year no one called.”
“They get all the grain they need from Ukraine at a low price,” he said. “Be quiet.”
Delia Marinescu contributed reporting from Bucharest.
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