Ukraine likely to harvest 45 million tonnes of grain in 2012

Ukraine is likely to bring in a grain harvest of 45 million tonnes in 2012 - its fourth-largest in 20 years - despite a severe drought and cold snap which have hit Ukrainian winter grain crops, a top consultancy said on Tuesday. UkrAgroConsult's forecast was slightly up on its last month's estimate of 44.7 million. Ukraine harvested a record 56.7 million tonnes last year.
"This year's harvest could total 45 million tonnes thanks to a record harvest of maize," Yelizaveta Malyshko, analyst for UkrAgroConsult, told a news conference. According to official data, drought in July-November damaged about a third of Ukrainian winter grains, mostly winter wheat, sown for the 2012 grain harvest.
Malyshko said the wheat harvest was likely to fall to 13.7 million tonnes from a previous estimate of 14.5 million. Ukraine harvested 22.3 million tonnes of wheat in 2011. But she said a fall in the wheat harvest would be compensated for by a good maize crop. "We forecast that the area under maize could rise to about 4 million hectares and the harvest total 20 million tonnes," she said.
In January, the consultancy estimated the harvest at 18 million tonnes. UkrAgroConsult has said Ukraine harvested 17 million tonnes of maize in 2011 while the Farm Ministry put the crop at 22.7 million tonnes. Ukraine has increased its maize harvest sharply during the past five years because of high demand, favourable prices and good weather conditions. Last year it planted 3.5 mln hectares of maize.
Another consultancy, Kiev-based ProAgro, said last week the harvest of maize could total 17.7 million tonnes this year. Analyst Ukrainian Agribusiness Club forecast the maize crop at 25 million tonnes in 2012. Farm Ministry gave no forecast for the harvest but noted that the area under maize could rise by 700,000 hectares in 2012 to 4.3 million hectares.
Malyshko said a fall in the 2012 wheat harvest would not remove Ukraine from lucrative export market and the former Soviet bread-basket was likely to export 6.3 million tonnes of wheat in the 2012/13 season. "The exports are available because of high ending stock," she said.
UkrAgroConsult has said Ukraine's wheat exports will not exceed 7.6 million tonnes this season and about 5 to 6 million tonnes of the commodity could remain in stocks. The data showed that Ukraine exported no more than 3.0 million tonnes of wheat so far this season and the pace of sales would not speed up sharply in coming months.
The consultancy said Ukrainian grain exports might total 1.3 million tonnes in January but could fall to 1.0 million in February because of icy weather hitting the country's ports. It said the main problem facing exports were logistical ones in ports caused by high winds and ice.
The ex-Soviet republic is enduring one of its coldest winter spells in six years with night temperatures down to minus 33 Celsius (minus 27 Fahrenheit) in places. "We had expected that grain export restrictions in Russia could increase Ukrainian sales, but Russia extended its exports," Malyshko said.
Russia's government said last week it saw no need for grain export restrictions in April and its raised grain export forecast for 2011/12 by 12.5 percent to 27 million tonnes. Russia has exported 19.6 million tonnes of grain since the start of this year.