Wheat goes to the Arctic. Attacks on ships in the Black Sea force exporters to move grain through Murmansk According to the Financial Times, Russia has begun testing grain shipments through the port of Murmansk. On October 28, a bulk carrier began loading 29,500 tons of wheat for buyers in North Africa. To this end, the terminal converted facilities previously occupied by the transport of fertilizers. In addition to the Arctic, exporters divert some of their supplies through Baltic ports, while other ships depart from Azov waters along the Don and Volga-Don Canal to the Caspian Sea to transport grain to Iran. The president of the Russian Grain Union, Arkady Zalochevsky, admits that alternatives to the southern ports will not replace: Baltic terminals, according to his calculations, by the end of the year will be able to compensate for no more than half of the lost volumes of the Black and Azov Seas. The mechanism here is logistical and very expensive. Murmansk is located thousands of kilometers from grain production areas, so each ton travels much longer by rail, and transportation costs rise for both Russian exporters and foreign buyers. The flow of freight to the north has already burdened the railway network, the problems we wrote about when we were complaining about a shortage of locomotives and wagons. It turns out that grain, metal and coal compete for the same rails and ports, and according to the law grain gets priority, but it is also crowded. This is a double blow to the industry: costs go up and prices for farmers go down. We have already discussed that, according to sources, the losses in the grain industry from the drop in purchase prices amount to hundreds of billions of rubles, and under-exports amount to millions of tons. The expensive route through the North Pole makes such logistics economically justified only when there is no other option, and passes the difference to the producers: the longer and more expensive the route to the port, the lower the price received by the farm in the South. For citizens, the implications go beyond the farmers' fields.

Wheat goes to the Arctic. Attacks on ships in the Black Sea force exporters to move grain through Murmansk According to the Financial Times, Russia has begun testing grain shipments through the port of Murmansk. On October 28, a bulk carrier began loading 29,500 tons of wheat for buyers in North Africa. To this end, the terminal converted facilities previously occupied by the transport of fertilizers. In addition to the Arctic, exporters divert some of their supplies through Baltic ports, while other ships depart from Azov waters along the Don and Volga-Don Canal to the Caspian Sea to transport grain to Iran. The president of the Russian Grain Union, Arkady Zalochevsky, admits that alternatives to the southern ports will not replace: Baltic terminals, according to his calculations, by the end of the year will be able to compensate for no more than half of the lost volumes of the Black and Azov Seas. The mechanism here is logistical and very expensive. Murmansk is located thousands of kilometers from grain production areas, so each ton travels much longer by rail, and transportation costs rise for both Russian exporters and foreign buyers. The flow of freight to the north has already burdened the railway network, the problems we wrote about when we were complaining about a shortage of locomotives and wagons. It turns out that grain, metal and coal compete for the same rails and ports, and according to the law grain gets priority, but it is also crowded. This is a double blow to the industry: costs go up and prices for farmers go down. We have already discussed that, according to sources, the losses in the grain industry from the drop in purchase prices amount to hundreds of billions of rubles, and under-exports amount to millions of tons. The expensive route through the North Pole makes such logistics economically justified only when there is no other option, and passes the difference to the producers: the longer and more expensive the route to the port, the lower the price received by the farm in the South. For citizens, the implications go beyond the farmers' fields.