by Poland’s agriculture minister says a US plan to build temporary silos on the border with Ukraine to store Ukrainian grain and facilitate its export through Polish ports will take three to four months.
Henryk Kowalczyk tells Polish TV that Ukraine would normally expect to export around five million tonnes of grain per month but the Russian blockade of its ports was preventing supplies from leaving by sea.
Yesterday, US President Joe Biden said Washington plans to construct temporary silos in countries bordering Ukraine, including Poland. They are needed for storage on the border because Ukraine’s railway gauge is wider than EU rail networks and the grain must be offloaded at the border before it can be reloaded on wagons en route to Polish seaports.
Kowalczyk says import capacity at the Polish border is currently limited to about 1.5 million tonnes per month but the construction of the silos would make the process smoother.
However, he says there is also a lack of grain containers and handling equipment.
“If we do not deliver grain to North Africa, to Middle Eastern countries, there will be hunger and a wave of migrants will flow to western Europe,” Kowalczyk says.
bbc
