Lhe Black Sea basin contains some of the most fertile agricultural land in the world. The black soils (the famous “chernozems”) Romania, Ukraine, which is the best endowed with it, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Kazakhstan, have an exceptional agronomic production potential, remarkably exploited by new agricultural companies and in particular the large agronomic ones. -holdings created in the wake of the financial crisis of 1998, then that of 2008. Taking up a plot of large geometric, flat and relatively homogeneous units, inherited from the old collective farms, these companies rationalized mechanization, mobilized the best Western technologies and achieve production costs per salable ton more than half of European or North American costs.
In Russia, they are developing by taking over from imports prohibited by Western sanctions adopted after the annexation of Crimea. [en 2014]. The Russian and Ukrainian diplomats, sensing that their competition is progressing, compete with each other in intervening with importing countries, threatening North American and European exports. The Black Sea has thus become, ten years after the collapse of the USSR, a central benchmark for the world cereals market. Russia is now the world’s largest wheat exporter, Ukraine the fourth, and together they account for about a quarter of world wheat exports. The Black Sea is also the first origin of sunflower oils, of which Ukraine is the world’s largest exporter.
The war in Ukraine has led to an almost total closure of navigation in the Black Sea for three months, with two major consequences. Firstly, a drastic drop in sales of agricultural products, which strongly penalizes Ukraine, of which they are the main exports, and therefore the main source of foreign currency. Secondly, and with more dramatic consequences, many countries will lack the wheat they must import in the next few weeks to balance their food balance sheets. Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey are largely dependent on wheat from the Black Sea. All the countries around the Mediterranean, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are affected, raising fears of new food riots.
Access to mined ports
The destructive shelling of the ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk [sud-est de l’Ukraine] were the first signal of the blocking of the seaway for the great export. Mining of port accesses (whether of Russian origin, in preparation for later attacks, or Ukrainian to prevent advances by Russian ships) deters traders and insurance companies from chartering and guaranteeing ships . Some boats, informed and necessarily guided by the Russian fleet, can probably leave the Russian port of Novorossiïsk [près de la Crimée, dans le sud-ouest du pays] to cross the Dardanelles. But this recourse cannot apply to Ukraine and is obviously not suitable for the passage of millions of tonnes of foodstuffs to be mobilized to feed the importing countries. This sea voyage has always been a natural necessity for the great export of cereals from the Black Sea.
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