Agriculture Committee on June 6th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 22 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. I'll start with a few reminders.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid fashion, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. So that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking, rather than the entirety of the committee. We are televised today, colleagues. My understanding is that it will be available in the days ahead for CPAC, if they choose to use it. Screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted.

Because we have a couple of new folks on the screen who are joining us as witnesses, for interpretation, you can toggle between English and French for your language of choice. That's at the bottom of your screen. Other than that, we would ask, for the benefit of our translators, that when you are speaking, you try to speak slowly so that they can keep up. Sometimes there is a bit of a delay, particularly virtually. We know we are going to do our best on that end.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, May 30, 2022, the committee is commencing its study of global food insecurity.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses for our first panel. Joining us today from Ukraine by video conference, we have Dr. Mariia Bogonos, who is the head of the centre for food and land use research at the Kyiv School of Economics. We have Mykhailo Amosov, who is a land use expert from the Center for Environmental Initiatives Ecoaction. We also have Yulia Klymenko, who is a member of Parliament at the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the first deputy chairperson of the committee on transport and infrastructure.

Colleagues, I am required, according to the standing orders, to tell you that we had a bit of technical difficulty with Ms. Klymenko's microphone. We weren't able to get a complete test done, but we have played around. We hope we're able to hear her testimony. She has a device, and we're going to do our best to make it happen.

There are a couple of other things I would like to mention, colleagues. We have, of course, a number of CUPP interns in the room. This is the Canada-Ukraine parliamentary program. There are 41 interns on the Hill.

Given what we are studying today, which is global food insecurity as a direct result of the war in Ukraine, we're very thankful to have our witnesses on the screen.

To our witnesses, let me thank you.

The CUPP interns have also played an important role of engaging with folks in Ukraine. Thank you so much. Thank you for your work on the Hill, and thank you for being here today.

We're going to start with five-minute opening statements from each of our witnesses.

Dr. Mariia Bogonos, you have five minutes. I'll turn the floor over to you.

[Dr. Mariia Bogonos, Head, Center for Food and Land Use Research of Kyiv School of Economics, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for this invitation.

I would like to start by reminding you that Ukraine, throughout its history, which spans far beyond 1991, has served as the breadbasket for many of its neighbouring and more distant regions. For example, in the 1950s, it produced more than 25% of the Soviet Union's grains. Over the last decade, Ukraine gained quite a prominent position in the global export of grain and sunflower oil. For example, in 2021, it exported 10% of global wheat exports and 50% of global sunflower oil exports.

On February 24, with the invasion by the Russian Federation on the northern, southern and eastern borders of Ukraine, the situation has changed dramatically. As of today, compared to February 2021, for example, Ukraine doesn't control more than 20% of its territory, which translates into roughly eight million hectares of arable land, which by comparison is 70% of arable land in Germany, which is one of the major grain exporters in the EU. It could be compared to approximately 20% of arable land in Canada.

What does this mean in terms of grain production? Ukraine is losing around 10 million tonnes of wheat, three million tonnes of corn, three million tonnes of barley and two million tonnes of sunflower oil. With this loss of land alone, Ukraine forgoes around 50% of its wheat exports and around 40% of its sunflower oil exports.

With the blockade of Azov and the Black Sea ports, the situation is even worse because, even in the best case scenario with the full capacity of the Ukrainian railway, the export capacity of Ukraine through the western borders is reduced at least by a factor of 10. We are comparing six million tonnes previously per month to 600,000 tonnes now, in the best case.

Why should we care about the exports? This is because sensitive countries, less food-secure countries like Egypt, Bangladesh, Yemen and Libya, are highly dependent on imports of wheat, which constitute more than 30% of the daily calorie intake of the population. They also depend a lot on imports from Ukraine. For example, on average, these four countries import more than 25% of wheat from Ukraine—some of them 50%, some of them 25%.

This means that the tremendous reduction in Ukrainian production and exports, in addition to the high prices for grains we had already observed before the war, will put these countries at a high risk of famine. In Ukraine, as well, the situation is not great because the affordability of food, meaning the financial ability of Ukrainians to buy food, is reduced by approximately 40%. This is a huge number. It means that we are maybe expecting certain nourishment issues in a larger population of Ukraine.

To conclude, unless stopped, the Russian Federation will continue devastating Ukrainian lands, and it will continue threatening domestic and global food security.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Dr. Bogonos,

We're now going to move to Mr. Amosov, for up to five minutes, please.

Over to you, my friend.

[Mykhailo Amosov, Land Use Expert, Center for Environmental Initiatives Ecoaction]

Good evening and good morning.

My name is Mykhailo Amosov. I'm here representing a government organization known as Ecoaction. Here are a few words about food security issues in Ukraine and in the world.

As the previous speaker said, a lot of agricultural land was actually occupied, bombed or attacked by Russian missiles and military equipment, etc. This illegal Russian invasion completely changed everything in every sector of the Ukrainian economy and agriculture.

This year, in 2022, Ukraine sowed seven million hectares less of agricultural crops than the previous year. It will cause shortages on the world food market. Actually, I see more risks for global food security than for only Ukrainian food security as a lot of countries, such as Yemen, Egypt, Indonesia and Bangladesh, really depend on Ukrainian grain exports. Even if these countries find alternatives to Ukrainian grain, these alternatives will be really expensive for them. We should find a way to help to export Ukrainian grains from Ukraine.

In Ukraine, we saw that the main problem is logistics for Ukrainian agribusiness, because a lot of silos and warehouses were destroyed by Russians. Actually, when all these objects were destroyed, we felt really big food shortages in the first days in supermarkets and in every store. We see this huge Ukrainian dependence on big agribusiness. Here we need to give more support for small and medium-sized Ukrainian agricultural farms, as we see them as more adaptable to new realities.

Even now, small, medium-sized and private households are producing more foods, more vegetables and more fruits than big agribusiness. For example, southern parts of Ukraine, like Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, were providing a lot of fruits and berries to other parts of Ukraine. Now it will be a big problem for Ukrainian citizens to build a healthy diet for everybody in Ukraine. These watermelons and cherries, etc., were produced by small and medium-sized farms. There was not a big involvement of the big agribusinesses there.

We need more state support for small farmers as they're more adaptable. As an environmental organization, we see it as more sustainable to the environment than big agribusiness.

That's it from my side. I'm happy to respond to any questions you have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, Mr. Amosov.

We'll turn to Ms. Klymenko. Let me start by saying on behalf of the 11 other members of Parliament around the table that it's great to be able to connect with a fellow parliamentarian. Thank you for your work. I know you're going to do your best with your headset microphone.

It's over to you, Ms. Klymenko.

[Yulia Klymenko, Member of Parliament, First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Transport and Infrastructure, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine]

Thank you.

I'm Yulia Klymenko. I'm a member of the Parliament of Ukraine and first deputy of the infrastructure and transport committee and the former vice-minister of economy.

It's my honour and pleasure to address the committee of the House of Commons of Canada, a country that symbolized a dream coming true for those Ukrainians who came to the Canadian land 120 years ago and built with all the other nations a prosperous, humane, peaceful and beautiful country, which supports forces of good and justice.

As the topic of our discussion today is a global food crisis, let me start with a number of facts that will illustrate the role of Ukraine as a global food supplier and assess the devastation to the global food supply purposefully brought by the Russian invasion.

Ukraine feeds 400 million people worldwide, mostly in the low-income countries. Ukraine covers in global exports 10% of wheat, 15% of corn and 47% of sunflower oil. Ukraine exports 58 million tonnes of agricultural commodities annually, and 90% of it was shipped through the seaports of Azov and the Black Sea through a developed infrastructure ecosystem of river and seaport facilities equipped with storage and export laboratories. That ecosystem turned 32 million hectares of highly fertile, arable area land into a well-developing industry, next only probably to the Ukrainian IT sector.

On February 21, Russia starting bombing Ukrainian cities, killing civilians and purposely mining and blocking all Ukrainian ports, systemically targeting all grain storage facilities, laboratories, railway infrastructure, fuel storage and oil refineries.

Here, I would like you to focus on probably the most important message in my speech. The interruption of the global food supply is not collateral damage from the war in Ukraine. It is a planned hybrid weapon to further massively destabilize the global economy and political order through the instigation of famine in Africa and Asia, which will result in migration flooding into North America and western Europe.

We have seen this scenario previously played out by Russia in Syria, which caused massive migration to Europe and deformed European political processes. This time food is the weapon and the scale of the crisis will be much bigger. Additional benefits that Russia expects will be extra revenue resulting from the skyrocketing of global food and commodity prices in the same way as they benefit from growing energy prices.

That's why in the Kherson and Donetsk regions in Ukraine Russians have already stolen 500,000 tonnes of Ukrainian grain and moved it to the Russian territory for further export.

As of today, Ukraine stores 22 million tonnes of grain ready to be exported with 40 commercial vessels already loaded with one million tonnes of agricultural commodities. However, it's blocked in the Black Sea by Russia.

Understanding how critical our food supply is for many countries—for example, Egypt depends on Ukraine for 80% of its wheat consumption—and despite the war, Ukraine has invested into tripling the river, railway and road transportation capacity. Now we can transport 1.5 million tonnes of grain monthly through all these capacities. Previously, it was 0.5 million tonnes. To empty our storage before we get our new crop harvested will take at least 15 months even with increased capacity. You can see a fundamental problem here both for countries in need of supply and for the new harvest as we will have little storage facilities available for the new harvest.

Ukraine is ready to create all necessary conditions to resume exports from the port of Odessa. The issue is how to make sure that Russia doesn't affect the trade route or bomb the city of Odessa.

Ukraine is looking for a solution together with the UN and our western partners. However, no guarantees from Russia have been received so far. Russia's proposal to establish corridors for exporting Ukrainian grain in exchange for lifting sanctions is absolutely unacceptable.

Looking at this year's harvest, we should consider that 20% of Ukrainian land is occupied by Russians and 13% of agricultural land has unexploded mines and shells, resulting in tractors being blown up and farmers dying in the fields when they try to cultivate the land. Nevertheless, we have planted, and we expect to harvest 80% of all arable land in Ukraine.

However, the volume of the harvest will be significantly lower this year, resulting from severe shortages of fertilizers, fuel and labour. Most of the active qualified male population is fighting on the front lines. Those women and men working so hard in the fields and securing a further food supply deserve our appreciation and need our strong support in order to produce food for people in need in Africa and Asia.

This is what we need to do together to avoid global food crises: Ukraine has to defeat Russia in the sea, in the air and on the ground.

To unblock Ukrainian sea routes, the Ukrainian military has to sink 25 more Russian warships and submarines by anti-ship missiles and MLRS—multi-launch rocket systems—and demine the sea routes.

To protect our agricultural land and infrastructure and make sustainable transportation corridors, we will need to strengthen the air defence as well as hold sustainable ground defence operations against Russia's ground advances in eastern and southern Ukraine. That is why we call for a further supply of armed vehicles—LAVs, UAVs—artillery rounds of 155-millimetre NATO-standard ammunition, M777 howitzers and robotic demining systems.

To support Ukrainian agriculture export capacity, we need to reconstruct destroyed grain storage facilities and railway and road infrastructure and repair, re-equip and increase the number of export phytosanitary and veterinary laboratories.

All the above-mentioned help will allow us to end the war and will allow Ukrainians to return to their homes and jobs to harvest and feed the world, to teach, to treat and to create our bright future. It will be much cheaper to invest in heavy weapons for Ukraine than to try to resolve prolonged global famine, migration, unrest and geopolitical turmoil.

Also, I would like to end my presentation by thanking you for all of the political, financial and military support of Ukraine, as well as the warm and welcoming attitude of the Canadian people for all Ukrainians who have had to flee the war. I have a personal experience, with my two youngest sons staying for 100 days in Toronto with relatives while I'm staying in Kyiv and my husband is helping the Ukrainian army as a sniper. I hope to take my kids back in two weeks and make their future safe in Ukraine.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much, Ms. Klymenko.

Just as a reminder, I think that by and large you did very well with your mike, but there was just a little bit of feedback. When you are asked questions, which undoubtedly you will be, if you could just be mindful of that feedback, that would be great.

Let's go to questions.

Mr. Lehoux, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for taking the time to speak with us this morning. I assure them that our thoughts are with them at this very difficult time.

My first question is directly to you, Ms. Klymenko.

You say that, at the moment, about 10% of arable land is mined. This has major consequences. You said that 80% of the area was seeded, but will you be able to harvest it?

[Yulia Klymenko]

Yes.

As I said, 13% of our agricultural land has unexploded mines and shells. Yes, we will harvest our new crop if the war does not go further from eastern and southern Ukraine into the central part, because we will keep Russian troops out in the southern and eastern borders and will not allow them to come further. However, to keep them kicked out from our land, our Ukrainian land, we need heavy weapons, as I've said. This is the only guarantee that we can harvest crops from 80% of our arable land in Ukraine. Yes, we can harvest that 80%, but we need to keep the Russian troops out of our land.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Your infrastructure has also been significantly affected. Is it badly damaged? I'm talking about storage structures, such as silos, and the roads used to transport grain to its destination, if you will. What is the current state of your infrastructure?

[Yulia Klymenko]

At this point in time, Russians have bombed and destroyed approximately 25% of our railway infrastructure and I think up to 10% of our road infrastructure, including bridges. They have also very particularly and specifically destroyed grain storage as well as fuel storage.

To take out crops, you need fuel and you need storage for new crops. The Russians are bombing it all the time, so it would be a great help if you can help us to build and renew storage as well as a part of our infrastructure. I understand that it's a long way, but we need railways, roads, rivers and also the blocked ports to export our crops to Africa, Asia and many other countries. They are waiting for it. All my Asian and African colleagues are just praying that we can unblock the seaports and deliver grain. It's for people who are already starving in Africa, unfortunately.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Canada has imposed a 35% surtax on all fertilizers imported from Russia. In your opinion, does this have a positive impact, in the context of the conflict you are currently experiencing with the Russians, or will it only hurt us more?

[Yulia Klymenko]

Yes, I think it's a good solution, because any dollar, Canadian, U.S. or any kind of dollar or euro coming to Russia is turned into bullets and killing us. They have to be isolated economically and politically and kept, with their Kremlin elite, out of the economic environment as well as the political environment.

Unfortunately, this is the only way you can punish Russia. You don't have a lot of trade with Russia, as I remember, in Canada. Fertilizers are important, but they have to pay a price for the violence, and we cannot feed the beast because this beast will definitely turn the global economy into dust.

What they are doing is destroying the global economy by destroying food supply chains and by increasing prices on energy, on food and many other things. You have to understand that, at this point in time, political, economic and continental war are linked to each other. They are destroying many economic models of other countries by sending migrants and by increasing prices. They are struggling in Europe because the energy prices, oil prices and food prices are sometimes double, triple or 40% more, making the European economy not very competitive to, for example, Asian economies.

Yes, unfortunately we have to—

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Klymenko.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much, Ms. Klymenko and Mr. Lehoux.

Mr. Louis, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all of our panellists for being here on this very important day, and I want to start by saying that you have Canada's unwavering support with the humanitarian aid we're providing, the immigration measures, the economic sanctions and the military aid. As a nation, we stand shoulder to shoulder with you.

Even on the ground in all of our communities—I know I can speak for my own—we have grassroots organizations that are volunteering for supports and resources to help displaced people. You have our support, but the message I'm getting now is that Canada as a nation and the world need to step things up and do even more. That message is clear and resonating.

Ms. Klymenko, member of parliament and the first deputy chairman of the committee of transport and infrastructure in Ukraine, thank you for your service.

You said that right now it would take 15 months to empty the storage of grains that you have and, obviously, you said that would not allow space for the new harvest. You are working with the UN and other partners. I wonder if you can expand on what more we can do to help with that backlog, because that will get food out to people, and it will help with the new harvest coming in.

[Yulia Klymenko]

As I said, the only sustainable way, unfortunately, is the heavy weapons. We can clean and deblock our ports, but we need the heavy weapons, which we don't have, for cleaning and demining, and also anti-ship missiles. This is the best sustainable way.

Sure, we have to work in parallel with the UN and other countries to make temporary food corridors and export our grains. We understand that the world depends on our grains. We cannot allow ourselves just to burn it. Unfortunately, if we will not transport these grains, we will have to waste it, to burn it. We need to put new crops in the storage or to build new storage, which is almost impossible to build in two months. In two to three months, we will have a new crop, and we need to empty our existing facilities.

For that, we need two things. First is working on temporary food routes with the UN and western countries. We're asking you to put pressure on Russia to allow us to export these grains and feed people in Africa and Asia.

The second is that we're expecting that western countries will be united and will provide us with heavy weapons so that we can do these food routes more sustainably. Russians ships should be out of the Black Sea and the Azov sea, because they are violating international law. The Black Sea works under international law and rules. It's not only Ukrainian, so to say, shore and coast. It's international marine legislation. They're simply violating and blocking. We have a lot of foreign ships staying in our ports, because they don't allow them to get out from the ports.

There are the two ways: to work with international organizations on temporary routes, and to deblock the sea permanently and sustainably.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you.

You also mentioned that this war was designed to destabilize your food supply, both in Ukraine and then using food as a weapon to destabilize the world economy.

As the minister of transportation, can you give us a bit of the status of your ports, your rails, the roads, the situation as it exists right now and the challenges? I understand that about 30% of your transit infrastructure has already been destroyed by Russian military offensives.

[Yulia Klymenko]

Yes. All of our ports are blocked, so there is no possibility to go through the ports. It was done, as I said, very purposely, and from the beginning, from the first day of the war. They just blocked the ports, understanding that this will increase the global crisis. As well, it will lead to heavy migration from Africa and Asia. This is a kind of hybrid weapon for them. They're using food and grain as a hybrid weapon, and not against Ukraine but against civilized countries.

On the second, 25% of our railways are destroyed. We are repairing them constantly in order to keep them functioning. We are doing it. We're doing it and we are losing people. More than 120 people working on railways have died, because they were repairing during the bomb shelling and during the active war actions. People are paying the price.

What we have also is that we have the rivers functioning. We can use the Dnieper River. We have three terminals there. We're trying to increase the capacity of these ports so that we can export, but it's a long-term project. It's not like in two months we can do it. It's one year or two years. It's taking a lot of time to build terminals and additional capacity on the river.

Roads are also destroyed, but the worst thing is that they are destroying grain storage as well as fuel storage. We have a huge deficit of fuel for the citizens as well as for the agribusinesses, and the price is skyrocketing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much, Mr. Louis.

Thank you, Ms. Klymenko. You're doing very well.

I will just remind you to try to avoid the feedback, but keep it up.

Mr. Perron, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I sincerely thank the witnesses. Our hearts go out to them and we will do everything we can to help them.

Ms. Klymenko, since the beginning of your testimony, we have been talking about the destroyed infrastructure and all that, but what do you need in concrete terms? You have the opportunity to talk to elected officials in the Government of Canada. What more can we do, starting tomorrow morning, to help you? You talked about weapons, but could we focus more on opening up the ports, for example? How should we do that?

[Yulia Klymenko]

As I said, there are three basic things you can do. First of all are heavy weapons, and I understand that you don't have a whole range of weapons as does, for example, the U.S. or Europe, but you have armoured vehicles like LAVs and UAVs. You have artillery round ammunition. You have howitzers. You have robotic demining systems, so we can clean our agricultural land of mines and shells.

That is very important because, with what they are doing now, it is possible to mine land at a distance of 100 kilometres or 80 kilometres. Russian troops, for example, are staying 80 kilometres from agricultural land and they can just send mines this distance, so they are purposely destroying our agricultural land.

What we need also are robotic demining systems. We also need help to restore, repair and build new grain storage and laboratories, which are very important because all our laboratories.... To export grain you need to take samples to laboratories. Our laboratories are mainly in the ports because we export 90% of all our grain and oil through the ports. Now we need to build a new chain of laboratories for our western borders in railway stations, on roads, for customs, so to speak. We need to build that from scratch because, as I said, we didn't expect that we would need it on the railways or roads. We had two seas.

Those are actually two things we need and you can help us with those, but heavy weapons are our priority. We clearly understand that we need to push them back from our territory and that's the only sustainable way for us to harvest, to take our harvest and to grow more to harvest in the next year to feed the world. They will always blackmail the whole world through agricultural crisis and fuel crisis, which they are doing now.

It's only a matter of time before they say they will close sea routes for two weeks and they will not allow the UN to come. They do that all the time with humanitarian corridors. I can tell you that the Russians didn't allow people in the city of Mariupol to take these people, our people, Ukrainian citizens, through humanitarian corridors or to bring food there from non-occupied Ukrainian territories.

As a result, more than 20,000 Ukrainians died in this city without food, water, medicine and without being evacuated, so what do you expect from these people, from Russians who are doing this in a Russian-speaking city basically? It was a Russian-speaking city very close to the Russian border, and they did this to Mariupol. I do not believe in any so-called temporary solutions with Russians. Either you defeat them or they will blackmail the whole world.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Speaking of the shortage, you mentioned that you have managed to seed 80% of your fields, as I understand it. Of course, this crop will not represent 80% of your usual crop. Even if you can get the grain out through the ports, next year you may have a problem.

How much do you think you'll be able to harvest this year, approximately? I know it's a difficult question, but do you have an estimate?

[Yulia Klymenko]

It's difficult, but we have estimations. We think we will be able to export the same amount, which is probably 22 million to 30 million tonnes of grain. For that, we need storage. We need somewhere to put this new crop. This is the biggest challenge and problem. That's why we need to take out the old crop and put in the new one.

We expect that we will be able to deliver 30 million tonnes of grain to the African and Asian countries and many other countries next year. Our consumption is dropping because six million Ukrainians left Ukraine. They went to Europe and many other countries, so we have decreased consumption internally and we can sell it externally.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you very much.