Vysotskyi: 60 to 70% of Ukrainian agricultural products are exported
21.02.2025 - 15:08
The Ukrainian agricultural sector is 60-70% export-oriented and at the same time export-dependent.
This was stated by the First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Taras Vysotskyi, writes Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, Ukrainian farmers can grow much more than the domestic market consumes.
“Therefore, the Ukrainian agricultural sector is export-dependent. The reality is that world consumption depends on Ukrainian agricultural exports. Therefore, this relationship is two-way,” Taras Vysotsky emphasized at the online discussion “Three Years of the Great War: Current State and Prospects for the Restoration of Ukraine’s Agricultural Sector.”
The First Deputy Minister recalled that in 2022, in the first months of the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and until mid-2023, when the temporary “grain initiative” supported by the UN was canceled, when Ukrainian products were not on the international market, world food prices went up sharply.
He cited UN data, according to which food prices increased by an average of 35% in hard currencies – euros and US dollars – in the first half of 2022.
“Such inflation of 35% worldwide is too much. This means that in fact all countries in general had to pay more for food. If you look at Western countries, where the average cost of food costs is 7-10-12%, or more, it increased to 10-15-80%. At the same time, in African and Southeast Asian countries, where the average costs are 50-60-70%, they increased to 70-80-90%. In some places, food has become inaccessible,” explained the first deputy minister.
Taras Vysotskyi also added that the situation became a prerequisite for the emergence of the Grain from Ukraine initiative of the President of Ukraine, within the framework of which a lot of Ukrainian agricultural products were supplied to African and Middle Eastern countries. Currently, the situation with food prices in the world has normalized. This is largely due to the Ukrainian sea corridor, which has been operating stably since December-October 2023. As previously reported by USM, Ukraine has exported almost 28 million tons of agricultural products since the beginning of the season.
