Ukraine will expand its grain sowing area by about 3 percent to 15.6 million hectares in 2011, Agriculture Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk said on Wednesday. He said an increase in the maize area by 17 percent to 3.2 million hectares was the main reason for the larger sowing area this year. Ukraine sowed 2.74 million hectares for maize in 2010 and harvested 11.9 million tonnes of the commodity.
Prysyazhnyuk said farms had already sown 2.7 million hectares for 2011 maize harvest or about 84 percent of the planned area. He gave no maize or grain harvest forecast for this year, but Anatoly Rozgon, the head of the ministry's planting department, said late last month that Ukraine was likely to harvest up to 45 million tonnes of grain in 2011.
Ukraine harvested 39.2 million tonnes of grain in 2010. Analyst UkrAgroConsult last month said the former Soviet republic could harvest 44.5 million tonnes of grain this year, including 20.42 million of wheat, 8.85 million of barley and 12.7 million of maize.