Farmers tried to block trains carrying grain from Ukraine. Police intervened

"The European Union has introduced certain regulations that half of Europe has no idea exist. In other words, it lifted tariffs along the border with Ukraine, thus destroying markets in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia. In Brussels, they don't understand our problems," said one of the protesting farmers.

The police had secured the tracks before the protest even began, so the farmers gathered on a road next to the railway crossing. The traffic had to be rerouted.

The leader of the Agrounia movement Michał Kołodziejczak, who was among the protesters, said that "we're living in a fiction created by Law and Justice, that it will somehow work out.

"I'm saying it here clearly: it won't somehow work out. Men, there is no somehow. Why even sow today when there is nowhere to sell our crops tomorrow, or to give it away for a pittance to companies which make a profit on it all," he added.

The farmers say they intend to protest for seven days. One of their demands is introducing tariffs for Ukrainian grain.

A police spokesperson explained the farmers had not been allowed on tracks due to safety reasons and to keep the transit coming through.

"We understand the emotions, however, we cannot have poeple jumping onto tracks right under our noses," said Andrzej Fijołek of Voivodeship Police Headquarters in Lublin.

Protests by European farmers are political and shipments of Ukrainian grain are not reducing the profitability of their business, Ukrainian food producers' union UAC said on Wednesday.

Logistical bottlenecks have kept large quantities of Ukrainian grains, which are cheaper than those produced in the European Union, in Central European states, reducing prices and sales for farmers there who have staged protests.

Poland last week said it would temporarily halt Ukrainian grain imports after farmers' protests led Poland's agriculture minister to resign, but transit would still be allowed.

"The political nature of the European farmers' strikes is obvious. Ukraine sells some grain to Poland, and this is not a massive amount," Denys Marchuk, deputy chair of the Ukrainian Agrarian Council (UAC), said in a statement.

"However, certain forces need to demonstrate that this is due to an oversupply of Ukrainian grain," he said, noting that the country faced elections later this year.

He said that the decline in global grain and oilseed prices was a trend and that Ukraine was using Poland and Romania as transit routes rather than directly exporting to them.

Marchuk said Poland's import ban could affect Ukrainian farmers in western regions as they traditionally sold to consumers in Poland and farms still have up to 40% of last year's harvest, which they planned to sell and use for the sowing season.

A major grain grower and exporter, Ukraine's grain output is likely to have dropped to about 53 million tonnes in the 2022 calendar year from a record 86 million tonnes in 2021, with officials blaming hostilities in the country's eastern, northern and southern regions.

Ukrainian officials this month said, however, the country may export a further 15.6 million tonnes of grain in the April-to-June quarter, which would lift this season's exports to nearly 53 million tonnes.

Millions of tonnes of grain from the 2021 harvest remained in Ukraine's silos after its Black Sea ports were closed in the second half of the 2021/22 season.

The ports were unblocked the end of July after the United Nations and Turkey brokered a deal between Moscow and Kyiv.

Efforts to extend the deal beyond next month are ongoing, with Russia demanding the removal of obstacles to the export of its agricultural products.