Brutal increase in the price of bread expected due to the Ukrainian grain ban?

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, current market processes can cause serious damage to Hungarian agriculture, and urgent measures must be taken to limit them. The announcement also mentions that Ukrainian agriculture uses production practices that are not allowed in the European Union and operates with extremely low production costs, which enables them to export grain, oilseeds, poultry, eggs and honey to the European market, which makes it impossible for domestic and Central European farmers to sell.

The restriction on imports to Hungary is temporary and lasts until June 30, 2023, which may be enough time to take meaningful and lasting EU measures, to reconsider the full duty-free nature of Ukrainian goods, and the operation of the solidarity corridors. According to the announcement, the actors of agriculture expect fair market conditions for European agriculture from the European Union

– Minister of Agriculture István Nagy wrote in the announcement.

There will certainly not be a shortage of Ukrainian wheat, because in the past period – of course mainly because of the war – there was already little of it, an expert told our newspaper.

In the period before the war, very little grain came in, only a few tens of thousands of tons – since the outbreak of the war, however, there has been an outstanding amount. In the 2022-23 economic year, approximately 240,000 tons of wheat came from Ukraine. If we look at the data on a weekly basis, we see that the data is constantly decreasing, we are now at the point where it comes from 600 to 3 thousand tons per week. In the week of April 10, a total of 1,245 tons arrived, which means that the decrease is clearly visible here as well.

– said Zsófia Pótsa, secretary general of the Grain Association, when asked by Pénzcentrum. He also added that there is probably no need to think about importing grain from elsewhere to make up for this lost quantity.