Ukraine is also in talks with the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – to add a third corridor for food exports, Senik added, according to Ukrainian media.
The challenge is titanic. In the next three months, 20 million tons of wheat would have to be taken out of the country before the new harvest arrives and there is no more storage capacity in the country.
These attempts pose a cost problem, since the land routes through Poland and Romania make the product more expensive compared to the sea route and do not solve the crisis.
Notices
The UN issued several warnings about the danger of a world food crisis due to the lack of exports from Ukraine. Likewise, the European Union (EU) seeks to solve the problem, but it is complex to manage the transport of huge quantities of wheat if the sea route is closed.
Russia said it was willing to guarantee food exports by sea, but for that it demanded that Ukraine demine those territories. Meanwhile, for that, kyiv demands a withdrawal of the invading troops.
Petr Obouchov, from the Municipal Council of the port city of Odessa, warned that the sea route is not safe, because the Russians have attacked some ships and because, in addition, there are many underwater mines off the coast. He even doubted a humanitarian maritime corridor as a solution. “Even if the war ended today, it would take at least half a year to clean up the sea and bring the ports back online,” he said.
Normally, Ukraine transports, through its ports, about 6 million tons of cereals and grains per month. Currently, the country’s silos are full due to the suspension of exports.
In Odesa, in addition, there are 57 ships anchored with more than a million tons of wheat on board. Not even the captains know how long the cargo will be kept.
Options
The closest Black Sea port is Constanta in Romania, where 240,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat have already arrived via ships, trains and trucks. From there, the grains are transported to other countries. And that is a path that is sought to be promoted now. But it’s not enough. If freight trains are used, the device comes up against the width of the tracks. For historical reasons, in Russia and Ukraine the width of the tracks is about ten centimeters greater than in the rest of Europe, so loads would have to be transferred.
The Polish government recently warned that the country only has the capacity to transport one to two million tons of wheat from Ukraine. In addition, on the transport routes to the West, there are traffic jams at the borders with waiting times between 16 and 30 days.
Source: Ambito
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