Georgian Government Bans Import of Wheat and Barley Beginning July
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
The Government of Georgia will ban the export of wheat and barley from the country for one year, from July 4, 2022, to July 4, 2023, due to the delay in the export of grain from Ukraine as a result of the Russian invasion.
“Given the situation in the region, in order to ensure food security, it is important to sell locally produced wheat and barley only on the domestic market,” Otar Shamugia, Minister of Environment and Agriculture said.
Despite the fact that Georgia is completely dependent on wheat imports and cannot export due to small production, the current situation poses a risk that a certain amount of wheat will be exported from the country, Minister argued. According to him, Georgia is completely dependent on wheat imports and buys 500K tons every year.
“The Ministry of Environment and Agriculture held a number of meetings with wheat and barley producers and listened to their positions. According to the producers, the local market, due to the existing demand, will fully absorb the harvest produced in the country.”
Georgian barley is exported to Iraq and Iran. The government believes that the food resource barley in the livestock, poultry, and pork sector should, at this stage, only be sold in the local market.
“This year, the forecast barley harvest is around 60K tons. As of today, more than 2.5K tons have already been exported,” said the Minister.
At this stage, restrictions do not apply to corn exports.
Millions of tons of wheat have been blocked in ports since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are reports that Russia is stealing Ukrainian wheat illegally. This is denied in Moscow, however, the administrations of Ukrainian regions controlled by Russia have issued ordinances on the ‘nationalization’ of wheat.
The Ministry of Agriculture says that today the country has a sufficient supply of flour and the price of bread is not high. Giorgi Khanishvili, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture stated a few days ago that Georgia imports the cheapest flour and, consequently, “we have the cheapest bread.”
“In this sense, the stocks are not in wheat but in flour. We have stable stocks, especially for this period, when new crops are beginning to arrive both in Georgia and in the world,” he assured the public, saying bread production is not endangered in Georgia.
The issue of rising wheat and flour prices, respectively, and the price of bread, has received special attention not only in Georgia but also internationally after Russia launched a large-scale war in Ukraine in late February this year.
Ukraine is the 5th largest exporter of wheat in the world. The United Nations has already said that in terms of food, this year will be the least secure in global history.
The US representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, says Russia has violated Ukraine's leading crop yields by bombing civilian infrastructure, planting mines in Ukraine, and deliberately and repeatedly damaging Ukraine's grain depots.
“According to our latest data, Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports is stopping food that Ukraine still has and could export to countries with extreme shortages.”
In early June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that if Ukraine could not acquire anti-ship weapons, 75 million tonnes of grain would no longer be exported from Ukrainian Black Sea ports by the fall.
The UN World Food Program estimates that if the war in Ukraine continues, 47 million people will be on the brink of starvation worldwide. Consumer basket prices have also risen around the world since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. According to the UN, the global food index reached a peak in recent years in March and increased by 12.6%.
