Ukraine starts 2019 sugar beet sowing - ministry

KIEV: Ukrainian farmers have started sugar beet sowing, seeding the first 27,000 hectares of the commodity, the agriculture ministry said on Friday.

Earlier on Friday, the ministry said the area under sugar beet could fall by 5 percent this year to 261,000 hectares.

Ukrainian sugar producers' union Ukrtsukor, however, forecasts the area could fall by a quarter to 230,000 hectares or less.

Ukrainian sugar refineries processed a total of 13.6 million tonnes of sugar beet in the 2018/19 season and produced 1.82 million tonnes of white sugar.