The Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 significantly disturbed global agricultural markets, creating more uncertainty regarding the future global availability of grains and oilseeds, and adding a layer of instability in already tense markets. It raised fundamental food security concerns as well as systemic concerns regarding the EU dependency on feed and fertiliser imports, in particular from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.

The availability of food, feed and fertilisers is not a primary concern in the EU regarding this year and the next cereals marketing year (2022/23, starting in July 2022 with the summer harvest and continuing with the utilisation of the grains produced in 2022 until June 2023, before the next harvest starts in summer 2023). The EU is largely self-sufficient for food, with a massive agri-food trade surplus, and the EU Single Market can be expected to prove once again its role in absorbing shocks. There are nevertheless concerns regarding affordability due to high market prices and inflationary trends.

Thanks to the proposed measures to increase the EU arable crops production, which will notably allow farmers to increase their sowing area for maize, sunflowers and protein crops (the wheat planting season being already largely over), and provided normal weather conditions prevail, the 2022 EU harvest may be a very good one for cereals and for oilseeds.

This, together with a lower feed demand – due to a lower pigmeat production in 2022– and a reduced use of cereals for biofuel, could enable EU grains exports to be 30% higher and EU grains imports 42% lower in the 2022/23 marketing year (compared to the 5-year trimmed average in both cases). This would contribute to cushion the impact on world markets of the expected lack of grain exports from Ukraine.