Bulgarian grain crisis not over yet

Animal feed producers in Bulgaria blame the government of failing to maintain the grain reserves in the country. They call it "poor management of the grain crisis that was caused by the recent droughts".

Calculations by the union of animal feed producers showed that 2.65 million tons of wheat, barley and maize will be necessary to balance the requirements for bread and animal feed this year. According to official information the recent harvest only yielded 2.2 million tons of corn. Therefore, the balance is short by 450,000 tons.

Buy from Hungary
Deputy Minister of Agriculture Svetla Buchvarova was in Budapest on August 9 to inquire personally what the conditions and requirements are for Bulgarian producers to be apply to buy corn from Hungary.

The EU has allowed the Hungarian intervention agency to sell one million tons of grain to other countries through an auction. The bidding on the first auction, which took place recently, started at €130 per ton, but due to high demand, it went up to €170 per ton.
The next auction is scheduled for August 29. Producers in Bulgaria believe that Bulgarian companies will not be able to offer a high enough price as they will be bidding against some of the international grain traders like Glencore and Cargill Foods.

Buchvarova also recently said that Bulgaria would negotiate with Ukraine to import corn from its state reserve. However, Ukraine has imposed a veto on grain exports at least until the end of August.

Related news item:
Bulgaria considers drought compensation (23 May)

Editor AllAboutFeed