The head of the Agrarian Union of Ukraine Gennady Novikov reassured: gas prices in the country will inevitably lead to a shortage of fertilizers in the domestic market.

According to the agrarian, Ukrainian banks do not lend to farmers who own less than 500 hectares. Consequently, those who receive loans are forced to take loans at interest rates. And this directly affects the quality of fertilizer use.

“If I buy not 200 tons of fertilizers, but, say, 100, this affects the quality of the products,” Novikov says, and explains that Ukraine previously bought 90% of fertilizers in Russia. - Surprisingly, this turned out to be news for our government. And it did nothing to reorient itself and start receiving fertilizer from other markets. ”

According to the head of the Agrarian Union, he turned to the authorities with constructive proposals in order to get out of the current situation with the least losses. In particular, it was proposed to use alternative sources of gas for production. But the authorities considered it necessary to raise gas prices for producers, which worsened the situation in the industry.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy assures: the government is interested in farmers increasing their income, and not vice versa. But how to get out of a difficult situation, the ministers have not yet decided.

“We can give cheap gas to fertilizer producers,” says Viktor Sheremet, Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy in Ukraine. “But then the other market players will be unhappy, reproach us for lobbying for the interests of some and neglecting the needs of others.” Sheremet is sure that only the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine can offer a way out of the situation, since the issue is serious and requires increased attention. But the deputy chairman of the All-Ukrainian Agrarian Council, Mikhail Sokolov, does not rely too much on ambulance from the authorities - he has no doubt that Ukraine significantly understates the fertilizer problem.

“The global fertilizer producer market uses cheap gas, so it has received significant growth in nitrogen fertilizer production capacities,” Sokolov complains. - Ukraine has lost its markets. We can’t get fertilizer bypassing cheap gas. Therefore, we have to use fertilizer supplies from Asia and Eastern Europe. ”

According to Sokolov, the Americans are ready to enter the Ukrainian market, but the prices for foreign gas are significantly overstated. Meanwhile, farmers are actively discussing another problem: according to unverified information, counterfeit batches of fertilizers that entered the black market bypass are coming from Russia to Ukraine quality checks and were not subject to certification. Moreover, according to farmers, low-quality product enters the domestic market on a large scale. This was announced recently by the director of the Institute of Consumer Expertise Yuri Chernobryvets.

“A lot of cattle died in some Ukrainian villages,” Chernobryvets says. “It is a coincidence or not, but the cows died after grazing in corn fields treated with the same chemical.” Yes, no one has carried out examinations, but farmers say that, alas, there are a lot of such cases in Ukraine. ”

A logical question: why were not the examinations conducted. The obscene answer is simple: the owners of cows are afraid of publicity and worry that if the fact of using harmful chemicals is established, all their animals will be taken away and eliminated. But the maintenance of cows is their only source of profit (sale of meat and dairy products).

What do we have in the end? Non-certified chemistry with unknown (and potentially dangerous) constituents actively pollutes the soil of Ukrainian fields, which leads to the death of vegetation and animals. And it surely falls into the grocery basket of Ukrainians. Ukrainian farmers cannot produce their own fertilizers due to the high cost of gas raw materials. And the purchase of gas from foreign suppliers costs a round sum.

Chernobryvets emphasizes that the issue needs to be dealt with closely at the state level, to find solutions and simultaneously block oxygen to counterfeit suppliers of obviously harmful fertilizers.

“And you also need to conduct serious raids on retail outlets where fertilizer is sold, and conduct an assortment analysis,” says Yuri. - I hope that they will take the situation very seriously and will not let things go by themselves. Especially during the period of active fertilizing of fields and sowing work. "