Analysis: How significant are Ukrainian agricultural exports to Poland?

Polish farmers continue to block imports of agricultural products from Ukraine, claiming they are depressing their local market. Agricensus looks at data on shipments from Ukraine to Poland to determine the true severity of the issue.

Background

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to a de facto blockade of Black Sea ports, forcing Ukrainian exporters to find new routes to move their agricultural goods out of the country. Within weeks, they established the shipment of those products through Poland, alongside Romania, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia, as one of these key new channels.

But farmers in these eastern European countries alleged unfair competition from cheap Ukrainian produce. This resulted in five EU member states, led by Poland, calling on the EU in January 2023 for a halt to imports – they also imposed unilateral import bans in the spring, in breach of EU single-market rules.

On May 2 last year, the EU Commission agreed to a temporary restriction on the import of four agricultural products - wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds - from Ukraine to those five countries until June 5, while continuing to allow those products to be shipped through these countries.

The Commission subsequently extended the ban to September, when the new harvest began to come in.

Exports to and transit through Poland both remained closed to date while the country’s government demands improvements to the control of the flow of produce while also expressing dissatisfaction with a license system that was intended to resolve the issue and ease tensions.

Since November - apart from a pause around the New Year - Polish farmers have blocked multiple key border crossings in response to EU ambassadors agreeing an extension to the tariff-free shipment of agricultural products, claiming it is the cause of a glut of grains in the country.

But changes in export volumes in recent years suggest that shows that current imports to Poland are small or similar to those before the war.

Grains

Exports of wheat, barley and corn from Ukraine grew fast after the start of the war, with 2.7 million mt exported across the Polish border in the 2022/23 marketing year from July-June, according to official customs data.

But while the average monthly amount exported was 447,500 mt until March 2023, exports dropped  to 66,200 mt in April and then to just 600 mt in June when Poland’s ban was announced.

In the 2023/24 marketing year, the total volume of grains shipped from Ukraine to Poland was just 46,000 mt, or around 6,571 mt per month.

Given that much of this grain was intended for transit to other countries, the volume that would have remained in Poland is insignificant compared with the size of Poland’s own production.

In 2022, Polish grain production was 24.8 million mt, of which Ukrainian transit accounted for around 11% of that figure. In 2023, output was 23.4 million mt; the share of Ukrainian grain shipped through the country was just 0.002%.

The Polish border is no longer a key export route for Ukrainian agricultural products - the reopening of the Black Sea ports under Ukraine’s Humanitarian export corridor means up to 70% of exports now flows through them. The share using rail and truck overland routes has dropped to 20%, most of which is through Romania.

Oilseeds

Ukraines’s sunseeds exports dropped to zero in 2023/24. For the whole of 2022/23, the total figure was 47,800 mt.

Rapeseed exports in 2022/23 jumped to 768,400 mt, which is about 21% of the size of Poland’s rapeseed crop that year.

After the ban came into force, however, the volume shipped so far in 2023/24 has fallen to 5,400 mt, or around 770 mt per month.

This happened against the backdrop of a steadily growing Polish rapeseed crop over the past four years, according to European Commission data.

In the 2023/24 season, the rapeseed harvest in Poland was 3.7 million mt, slightly exceeding the harvest in the previous season.

At the same time, exports of Polish rapeseeds to Germany increased, calming fears that Ukraine would take market share here from Poland.

According to Eurostat, Poland’s rapeseed exports to Germany were 468,142 mt in the 2022/23 season, more than 44% higher than the previous season.

At the same time, Ukrainian exports of rapeseed to Germany in the 2022/23 season fell by almost half compared to the previous season to 449,126 mt.

In the current 2023/24 season, however, Poland and Ukraine have both increased rapeseed exports to Germany.

Meals

Ukraine’s exports of vegoils and meals have increased in 2023/24 from 2022/23 but the flow is regular and the trend was in place before February 2022.

Rapemeal exports jumped to 159,600 mt in 2023/24 from 42,400 mt in 2022/23 while sunmeal exports in 2022/23 amounted to 646,400 mt. More than half that figure - 372,200 mt – has already been exported in 2023/24.

Ukraine’s total meal exports to Poland were 387,517 mt in 2021/22 after 457,932 mt in 2020/21.