At a briefing in the “Ukraine” Media Center, the representative of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Viktoriya Mikhalchuk talked about the damage caused to the agricultural sector of Ukraine as a result of the war. This is reported by the information agency “Interfax-Ukraine”.
“Preliminary estimates as of June put the damage to the agricultural sector from the war at between $4 billion and $6 billion, including damage to infrastructure such as irrigation equipment, storage, shipping and processing infrastructure, greenhouses, field crops, farm animals,” Mikhalchuk said.
She added that this year, according to FAO estimates, Ukraine expects to harvest up to 51 million tons of grain.
“Taking into account the areas that were directly affected by the war, only 61 million tons of the total number of 75 million storages are physically accessible. 14% are damaged or destroyed, 10% are located in the territory occupied by Russia,” Mikhalchuk said.
According to her, of the available warehouses, 35% remain filled with 22 million tons of grain and oil crops awaiting export.
“That is, only 65% of the available storage is available,” explained the FAO representative.
Mykhalchuk reported that FAO is also working with the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine on alternative ways of exporting grain from Ukraine.
“One such alternative route that we currently support is to export through Romania and help the Ismaili laboratory to increase its capacity so that the certification can be done much faster and accordingly the number of exports will increase, possibly through those borders,” she said.