“ACNIS ReView from Yerevan”. The issue of Kazakh wheat imported through Azerbaijan has become a tangle of disagreements. The authorities present it as a major, groundbreaking achievement, while the opposition views the Kazakh wheat imported into Armenia as low-grade grain unfit for consumption and suitable only for animal feed. According to local safety tests, however, despite being classified as 4th grade, this wheat is widely used in bread production, meaning it is considered safe. International testing, however, paints a very different picture.
One of the oldest and most reputable companies in the field of grain testing, inspection, verification, and certification—Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS), a Swiss multinational—has determined that the Kazakh wheat is unfit for food consumption due to the heavy rains in September. These rains hindered the harvest and caused the wheat to sprout inside the ear, a process that significantly degrades its quality and can completely destroy its baking properties.
The topic was also raised by the APK News Information Agency, which interviewed Taisiya Kolegova, vice president of the Union of Grain Processors of Kazakhstan. She emphasized that producing flour from sprouted grain is STRICTLY PROHIBITED, as such grain is highly likely to be contaminated with alpha-toxins. “Flour made from such grain can lead to mass deaths, and this is not a scare tactic. This is a matter of CRIMINAL LIABILITY. Flour from sprouted wheat is not even suitable for animal feed,” she said. Incidentally, in 2023, about 45 wagons of wheat of this type were exported from Kazakhstan to Afghanistan, causing an international scandal.
The alarm signals coming from abroad are indeed troubling. How, then, do the Armenian authorities respond to the uproar surrounding the Kazakh wheat? According to the Hraparak daily, following these revelations, prime minister Nikol Pashinyan “tried to wash his hands of the matter,” stating that the government is not the buyer — a private company is. “The Government did not make that purchase; a private company imported it for its own needs. The Executive merely ensured the opening of the route through negotiations, while the deal was carried out by the private party,” Pashinyan said from the parliamentary podium. And that “private party” is none other than well-known businessman Samvel Aleksanyan.
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The importing company claims that the executive branch simply forced them to carry out imports from Kazakhstan for the sake of its own PR. Notably, the imported wheat had not even been milled at that point. It is assumed that the architects of this scenario did not care what kind of cargo would arrive; what mattered was that the route passed through Azerbaijani territory, allowing the ruling Civil Contract party, ahead of the 2026 elections, to boast that they had not only opened an alternative route but had also consolidated the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement with yet another point. As for the long-suffering Kazakh wheat itself, the plan is to use part of it for vodka production and the rest as animal feed.
There is a clear sense of frivolity in the approaches of both the entrepreneurial and governmental circles involved in this deal. The representative of the importing company prefers to distill vodka from questionable wheat; the minister of Economy, responding to journalists’ questions, jokes: “Who knows how many of you have already eaten bread baked from that flour?” The prime minister, for his part, distances himself from the deal—almost justifying his position by saying, “The Government only ensured the opening of the route,” and so on. Incidentally, because of this publicity stunt surrounding the opening of the route, Russia has raised the price of wheat supplied to Armenia, and citizens may soon feel the consequences firsthand.
