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ARCHIVED - Cereal harvest in Spain falls 21 per cent as a result of war in Ukraine
Spain usually imports 30% of its grain needs from Ukraine
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has pushed up prices in practically every sector across the globe, and grocery staples in Spain have already seen their largest year-on-year increase since 1994. Now, the ASAJA agrarian association has sounded a new alarm, warning that the Spanish cereal harvest will suffer a significant cut this season, producing a meagre 15.5 million tonnes – 21% less than last year’s figures.
Spain needs a minimum of 36 million tonnes of cereal each year to meet both human and animal consumption needs. Crucially, this country is a major exporter of pork around the world but pigs require a huge amount of grain and oilseeds to reach marketable weights. While Spanish farmers don’t produce enough cereal to meet the country’s needs, this deficit has always been made up by importing 30% of the product needed for feed from Ukraine: 17% of the wheat consumed and up to 60% of sunflower derivatives, estimated at 500,000 tonnes.
Even aside from the difficulty in importing cereals from Ukraine, Spanish farmers expect their yields to be down this year because of the extremes in weather. But rising costs are the major contributing factor. According to Ignacio López from ASAJA, energy, fertiliser and seed costs have all skyrocketed, and a supply shortage of phytosanitary products, which control pests and disease in winter crops, has devastated harvests.
For these reasons, the plan to farm 600,000 hectares of fallow land, which was approved by the EU after the war broke out, will now have little impact on the shortage of crops.
The increase in production costs has forced the EU to allow imports from third countries above the limits established up to now. Aid has also been extended to farmers in Spain, which amounts to private storage for 7,000 tonnes of pork, 169 million euros in direct aid for dairy farmers and another 150 million to sheep, poultry and goat farms.
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