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US President Joe Biden said temporary grain silos would be built along Ukraine's western borders to help the country, which was invaded by Russia in late February, export more grain, World Grain reported on June 15.
Speaking at a Philadelphia Union convention on June 14, Biden said the U.S. plans to “work closely with our European partners to get 20 million tons of grain locked up in Ukraine onto the market to help lower food prices.” You cannot cross the Black Sea because you will be expelled from the water.”
Biden's comments were made against a backdrop of a Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports that includes the laying of sea mines, World Grain wrote, and with much of the old harvest remaining in storage, Ukrainian authorities said they are running out of storage. for the new grain harvest.
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While temporary grain silos on the country's western border were welcome, the amount of grain that could be transported by rail to Western Europe was much less than the ports' grain shipping capacity, the report said.
Moving grain by rail and truck is problematic due to limited trucking capacity and the need to reconfigure railcars at the border to fit a narrower gauge used in other countries.
In an interview with World Grain, Sergey Bratchuk, spokesman for the Black Sea military administration, said Ukraine needed help from its allies to end Russia's dominance over the Black Sea.
“Unblocking the port of Odessa is the most important thing to reinvigorate exports,” said Bratchuk.
Ukraine's ports were partially damaged or destroyed, Bratchuk said, but those that were in partial working condition could not yet be used due to the blockade. One of the country's largest grain terminals, Nika-Tera in Mykolaiv, which had the capacity to store up to 500,000 tonnes of grain at a time, had also recently been destroyed, he added.
Ukraine is one of the world's largest exporters of wheat, corn, sunflower oil and fertilizers. Since the start of the lockdown, global food prices, which were already rising before the invasion, had risen to near-record levels, wrote World Grain.
Translated with the free version of the translator – www.DeepL.com/Translator
