Seems innocuous enough and detail is
sketchy but if this means what I think it means it could have far reaching
ramifications for Ukraine agriculture and the global grain trade as a whole.
One of the biggest restrictions to Ukraine
increasing cereal grain output is plant genetics; to put it bluntly Ukraine domestic wheat varieties
are, by and large, not very good.
They produce few (if any) tillers (shoots), the grains per ear is (woefully) low resulting in a low number of total grains (tonnes)
per hectare.
You can throw as much nitrogen and pesticides
at it as you like but if the genetic potential is low it’s going to stay low.
In the past legislation all but barred the import
of seed wheat and barley varieties (not corn or oilseeds though) by creating barriers to make it an economic proposition, presumably done to
protect Ukraine’s crumbling seed breeding industry.
This new piece of legislation could be the catalyst
to open up the market to imported cereal seeds which have the potential to
double wheat yields within a season or two.
That might be an oversimplification, you have
to have better husbandry to allow better genetics to reach its potential but
the reality is there are a awfully lot of very good farmers in Ukraine who could do
just that.
This year Ukraine will export around 11mmt of
wheat or 7% of the worlds trade; a modest yield increase of, say, 20% could
increase exports to 16mmt plus.
Today could just have been a very important
day indeed for Ukraine and agriculture as a whole.