The Von der Leyen Commission, instead of representing the interests of a member state like Poland, is siding completely with a non-EU country and trying to blackmail the Poles if they do not open their borders to all Ukrainian agricultural products. This move would primarily damage Polish agriculture, but also other countries. Germany and Brussels no longer even pretend to act against Poland in the name of Ukrainian interests. With the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the Morawiecki government, in a gesture of great solidarity, opened its borders to agricultural products coming from Ukraine. However, Polish agrifood producers and consumers suffered the negative consequences.

Now, eurocrats are attempting to force this market opening on Poland once again through outrageous blackmail! Unfortunately, Prime Minister Tusk, subservient to Von der Leyen and the Brussels oligarchies, babbles on one hand about having made difficult decisions when necessary to protect Polish farmers from excessive imports of goods from Ukraine, but in practice has accepted a new EU-Ukraine trade agreement that has increased duty-free import quotas for Ukrainian goods—which will not have to comply with EU standards until 2028!

It should be highlighted that until then, Ukraine can export agricultural products containing pesticides and chemicals that have been banned in the EU for years. Therefore, these agricultural products can pose a threat to the health of EU citizens. It must be remembered that Ukraine is not subject to EU rules. While EU farmers must respect often draconian regulations, in Ukraine products can be genetically modified and plant protection products banned in the Union can also be used: safety for consumers is clearly not a priority for Ukrainian producers. Not to mention animal husbandry: “animal welfare” on farms is a little-known concept.

Data from Polish authorities who carried out quality checks on Ukrainian grain in 2023 showed that pesticides, GMOs, and mycotoxins were found in samples of imported cereals from Ukraine; others also contained mercury, cadmium, lead, and iron. For instance, from January to May 2023, the presence of harmful substances was detected in 35% of the samples collected.

To understand the situation facing farmers in Poland, and in Europe generally, it must be explained that in Poland there are around 1.3 million farmers, each cultivating an average of about 12 hectares of agricultural land. The country’s total arable land area is 18.87 million hectares. And these farmers running family farms must compete with the agriculture of a country—Ukraine—that possesses the largest agricultural area in Europe after Russia: 41.5 million hectares (about 70% of the country’s surface area), of which over 32 million hectares are arable. Excellent crop conditions are due to a favorable climate and fertile soil. During the communist period, there were 12,000 kolkhozes, collective farm enterprises of the Soviet state. With the birth of independent Ukraine in 1991, a radical agricultural reform began with widespread privatization. In this way, agricultural holding companies (agroholdings) were born, managing from tens to hundreds of thousands of hectares leased from landowners. The ten largest Ukrainian agricultural enterprises lease a total of 2.8 million hectares of land. The owners of these enterprises gradually became one of the country’s most important political lobby groups, alongside industrial oligarchs. UkrLandFarming (registered in Cyprus), controlled by oligarch Oleg Bakhmatyuk, managed over 670,000 hectares. Kernel Holding is owned by Andriy Verevskyi and possesses half a million hectares. It is already the largest grain exporter in Ukraine and has terminals on the Black Sea. HarvEast Holding is owned by Rinat Akhmetov’s System Capital Management and Vadym Novynskyi’s Smart Holding: the group has a turnover of tens of billions of dollars.

It should be recalled that before the war with Russia, Ukraine was one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat (6% of global exports) and corn (11% of global exports).

Ukrainian grain oligarchs, operating on the global market, are naturally linked to large multinationals like Cargill. What’s more, about 10% of arable land in Ukraine is in the hands of foreign owners. These are mainly companies from European Union countries, but also the United States, China, and other countries. They primarily own vast areas of arable land, focusing their activities on the production of grains, oilseeds, and vegetables.

According to information from the veterinary inspectorate at the Polish-Ukrainian border, the companies importing cereals from Ukraine between early January and mid-February 2023 were mainly companies representing Western interests: Cargill, Glencore Polska, Inter-Grain, Limagrain Polska, Louis Dreyfus Company Polska, Mars Polska, Pfeifer & Langen Polska.

So one must ask whether the grain war that Ukrainian authorities have unleashed against neighboring countries, first and foremost against Poland, is not a proxy war on behalf of agrifood oligarchs and the major Western companies working with them.

The situation for Ukrainian exporters grew complicated after the bombings of Black Sea ports—Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Mykolaiv—when Ukraine partially lost the cheapest route for grain export. Therefore, Ukrainian agrifood lobbies will certainly do everything to route exports through EU countries, with the risk that the grain will end up on the European market instead of reaching African countries, for example.

Unfortunately, many harsh EU measures hit Polish agriculture, which has already been weakened by the Mercosur agreement and the previous EU-Ukraine agreement. But the Tusk government does not sufficiently oppose this European Commission policy, which clearly harms Polish farmers and consumers. Furthermore, the EU takes measures in favor of a non-member country, Ukraine, to the detriment of a member state and its consumers. Now, another three years of unfair competition could mean that small, already indebted Polish farmers will go bankrupt and likely have to sell their land and farms. What is happening in Poland should serve as an alarm for all EU farmers.