Agriculture
The Ukraine war changes Carinthian agriculture. On the one hand, agricultural products are in greater demand than ever before, but according to the Chamber of Agriculture, the high producer prices are also leading to a shift in cultivation area. Carinthia’s farmers are increasingly relying on soybeans, which are cheaper to produce, while less grain and silo maize is grown.
The increase in soybean cultivation is a whopping 17 percent in Carinthia. That’s 800 hectares more soybeans that Carinthia’s farmers are producing this year because no extra nitrogen fertilizer is needed. Here the prices have increased four to five times, says Ernst Roscher, head of the department for plant production in the Chamber of Agriculture. “Fertilizer production is very closely linked to the gas. The supply bottlenecks have of course driven up the prices for nitrogen fertilizers, which has prompted many farmers to switch to crops that are self-sufficient in nitrogen supply.”
High costs can only be cushioned by a good harvest
This spring cultivation was generally very expensive for farmers. There are also cost increases for seeds and pesticides. Another thing that bothers farmers is the expensive diesel. If the harvest turns out to be bad at the end, there could be big problems, says Roscher. “Because the costs have already been incurred. If the harvest doesn’t produce something where you can work with usable producer prices, then we really have a problem.”
Drying systems also depend on gas
On the other hand, good harvests in autumn would be able to compensate for the higher costs. Here, too, the dependency on the gas becomes clear. Many drying systems for maize, for example, depend on natural gas, alternatives – such as those with wood chips – would first have to be created.
Consumers would probably have to continue to adjust to more expensive foods, as well as to bottlenecks – for example with sunflower or rapeseed oil, most of which come from Ukraine.