Ukraine's Agriculture Ministry expects the area sown to corn to increase to 4.5 million-5.0 million hectares this year from 3.6 million hectares in 2011, it said on Wednesday, making up for winter grain plantings lost to drought and cold weather.
"The total area sown to grains will be 15.8 million tonnes, roughly the same as in 2011," Leonid Sukhomlin, the head of the ministry's grains unit, told an industry conference. "The areas sown to corn, spring barley, oats and soya bean will increase."
He said the area sown for spring barley could rise to about 3 million hectares this year from 2.5 million a year earlier. The former Soviet republic expects to harvest 42 million-50 million tonnes of grain this year, down from 56.7 million tonnes in 2011.
Ukraine consumes 26 million tonnes of grain per season. Farm Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk has said Ukraine could harvest up to 16 million tonnes of wheat this year. Ukraine needs 12 million tonnes of wheat, including 6 million tonnes of milling wheat, per season for domestic consumption.
Ukrainian winter grains have been damaged by drought and cold, meaning farmers will have to reseed large areas in the spring. Sukhomlin said up to 3.5 million hectares of winter grains could be reseeded this spring and about 1.4 million hectares out of those would be replaced with corn. He said that farms were likely to thresh 5.5 to 6.0 million hectares of winter grains in 2012, including 4.5 to 5.0 million hectares of winter wheat, 0.8-1.0 million hectares of winter barley and about 300,000 hectares of winter rye. Ukraine harvested about 6.5 million hectares of winter wheat, 1.2 million of winter barley and 280,000 hectares of winter rye in 2011.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.