site.btaUPDATED Grain Producers Protesting against Ukrainian Grain Imports

In 17 cities across Bulgaria on Wednesday, grain producers staged protests with heavy machinery against unregulated grain imports from Ukraine, among other problems in the sector. National Grain-growers Association (NGA) head Kostadin Kostadinov told a BTA-hosted news conference in Sofia that these are peaceful and depoliticized protests planned for Wednesday only, but unless urgent measures are taken, the machinery will go to the capital and to border control checkpoints. 

According to Kostadinov, the reasons for the protests have accumulated over time, but over the last several months the problems have escalated to the point where the sector is facing mass bankruptcies, inability to pay rents, and significant indebtedness between companies. 

In his words, among the main problems over the past year is the lack of policies: people completely unfamiliar with the sector come and go in the country’s governance. This is a problem not only at the national but also at the EU level, as evidenced by Wednesday’s protests of farmers in nine other Member States. 

The NGA and the National Union of Agricultural Cooperatives in Bulgaria insist on state policies that will protect Bulgarian grain production from Ukrainian imports by banning the imports of grain and oil-bearing cultures treated with plant protection products not allowed in the EU. The protesters want the EU’s solidarity lanes for exporting Ukrainian grain to be transit ones only.

The two organizations plan to give to the caretaker Agriculture Minister a declaration reading that the imported Ukrainian grain is currently being used mainly for consumption and processing in Bulgaria, despite the availability of enough local produce that meets the high EU quality requirements. The uncontrolled quality of Ukrainian grain is a threat to Bulgarian consumers’ health, the document also reads. 

In Stara Zagora, over 300 grain producers passed through the southern city with over 150 tractors and heavy machinery. Thracian Union of Grain Producers head Tsvetan Berberov said during the protest that their position joins the common EU demands of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary. 

“The uncontrolled and unregulated grain import from Ukraine causes trouble. We have allowed an export lane, not this produce to remain in our storage facilities and be processed by our enterprises,” he said. He gave an example with 200,000 tonnes of sunflower in August, which is produce from 10,000,000 ha. There have been proposals to mix Ukrainian sunflower from 2021, which is of lower quality due to having been stored for so long, with Bulgarian from this year. That will lower the quality of sunflower oil, Berberov argued.

At Wednesday's meeting of the Council of Ministers, the caretaker government adopted Bulgaria's position for the informal meeting of EU agriculture and fisheries ministers, taking place in Prague from September 14 to 16. According to the position, as quoted by the Government Information Service, in Bulgaria there are alarming disturbances of the sunflower market following the import of over 650,000 tonnes of oil-bearing sunflower from Ukraine under that country’s association agreement with the EU. Consequently, Bulgarian farmers are facing serious challenges, such as difficult sale of their produce, limited grain storage space, higher expenses, and price pressure. “In this relation, Bulgaria calls on the Commission to pay special attention to the situation on the market of oil-bearing cultures and to apply all possible instruments, including emergency measures against market disturbances,” Bulgaria’s position reads.