The growing grain problem which the market struggles to cope with

Less than one third of the grain produced in Poland is being bought from the market. It is then stored in warehouses belonging to private companies that have acquired the assets of former state-owned farms and grain plants. The biggest market player, however, is still the Agriculture Market Agency (ARR), which stores roughly 515,000 tones of grain in fully-owned companies and about 300,000 tones in partially-owned firms. The second biggest market player is Zbigniew Komorowski, which has a storage capacity of 600,000 tones, followed by Andrzej Łukowski with 220,000 tones. "It is estimated that all the warehouses can store a total of 11-11.5 million tones, but one third of this is owned by agriculture producers that store grain for their own purposes," said head of the Polish Chamber of Grain and Fodder (PIZ-P). The above entities control roughly one quarter of the total storage space capacity in the country and also own the Warsaw Commodities Market (WGT), which is the only intermediary through which ARR sells its grain. (Rzeczpospolita, June 7-8, p. B1) M.M.