Excessively hot weather in late summer will cut Ukraine's maize harvest by roughly 13 percent to around 27 million tonnes in 2014, but domestic and export prices may fall despite the smaller output, traders and analysts said. Ukrainian farmers kept the maize sowing area at a record high level of 4.8 million hectares this year after the former Soviet republic harvested an all-time-high crop of 30.9 million tonnes in 2013.
But unfavourable weather in the second half of this summer cut the yield to about 5.2-5.6 tonnes per hectare from 6.4 tonnes in 2013, analysts and traders said. "The yield of maize is much lower than last year. Very hot weather in eastern, central and southern regions has damaged crops, and we see the harvest at around 25 million tonnes," a large foreign trader said.
Analyst UkrAgroConsult revised down its forecast for Ukraine's 2014 grain crop by 2 percent after the consultancy cut its forecast for this year's maize harvest by 4 percent to 25.9 million tonnes due to a fall in yields and a conflict in eastern regions. "The series of bumper maize crops of recent years will stop in 2014: the crop will be lower than last year but still the second largest after the 2013 record," UkrAgroConsult said.
Another consultancy, ProAgro, sees the maize harvest at 27.2 million tonnes. It said that the yield was likely to fall to 5.8 tonnes per hectares from 6.0 tonnes in 2013. Agriculture Minister Ihor Shvaika said on Wednesday that Ukraine could harvest 30 million tonnes of maize this year, but analysts and traders considered this forecast to be exaggerated.
They also said domestic and export prices for Ukraine's new maize harvest, which now hardly cover net costs for farmers, after falling for about two months, are likely to continue declining in the near future due to global trends. Big global harvests and stocks mean that prices are unlikely to increase significantly in the next few years.
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