International

U.S. farm groups urge sowing on protected land as war cuts off Ukraine supply

By Leah Douglas, Christopher Walljasper and Karl Plume

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Farm teams are urging the U.S. Agriculture Division to permit farmers the power to plant on acres put aside for conservation, to assist fill the absence of Ukrainian corn, wheat and sunflower oil amid Russia’s invasion of the nation.

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on Wednesday, seven agriculture lobbying organizations representing U.S. farmers, feed producers, grain exporters, millers, bakers and oilseed processors requested the USDA to offer flexibility to farmers to plant crops on greater than 4 million acres of “prime farmland” presently enrolled within the Farm Service Company’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) with out penalty.

This system pays farmers to fallow land for a 10-year interval.

“It stays unclear whether or not Ukrainian farmers will have the ability to safely plant crops this spring,” the letter mentioned. “Time is of the essence. The planting window in america has already opened.”

If these acres are planted, at 2021’s common corn yield, that might imply a further 18.7 million tonnes of grain produced.

The letter, signed by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Nationwide Grain and Feed Affiliation and others, echoes a March 8 request by U.S. Senator John Boozman of Arkansas, in addition to calls from agriculture economists.

“That is an emergency, wartime state of affairs,” mentioned College of Illinois agricultural economist Scott Irwin. “It is very clear to me that the world wants acres of corn and wheat this spring, and the place are we going to seek out them?”

Some farmers are skeptical concerning the method. CRP acres are sometimes put aside as a result of they’re tough to farm, have poor soil, or are environmentally delicate.

“In my space, the whole lot that’s farmable is farmed. We’ve got little or no CRP in my neck of the woods. It is solely in locations you don’t wish to farm,” mentioned Kevin Scott, a corn and soybean farmer in southeastern South Dakota.

The struggle in Ukraine threatens round 7 million hectares (17.3 million acres), practically half the nation’s deliberate spring planting area, Agriculture Minister Roman Leshchenko mentioned. Some farmers can not entry farms in battle zones, whereas others battle to seek out enough gasoline and fertilizer, and exporters are blocked from transport grain by Russian forces.

The European Union has already eased restrictions on fallow land, providing monetary incentives for farmers to plant extra acres.

The USDA-FSA mentioned it had no quick plan to chill out CRP guidelines, whereas Vilsack, in a March 10 city corridor, didn’t rule it out.

“I feel it is a little bit untimely to make that decision, as a result of we actually don’t know exactly what is going on to occur,” mentioned Vilsack.

(Reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington, and Karl Plume and Christopher Walljasper in Chicago; Modifying by Matthew Lewis)



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