Ukraine: Rains could lead to 60% loss in winter harvest
Heavy rains across Ukraine during October could lead to a decrease of winter grain areas and lower grain export volumns, says agriculture minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk.
According to the local media, Prysyazhnyuk said that the forecasted unfavourable weather conditions could lead to a decrease in the winter grain area sown for 2014 harvest by about 20%, while the grain producing companies last week said that up to 60% could be lost.
“I think we could lose about 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres of winter grains),” Prysyazhnyuk said, “At the same time the sowing area for winter barley could fall to 1.2 million acres, which will be a decline of around 60%. Winter wheat area could fall to 15 million acres against an initially anticipated 17 million”.
At the same time Prysyazhnyuk said that rainy weather had also slowed the pace of the corn harvest and the ministry was forced to revise its export forecast for October.
“We had expected the exports of 2.8 million tonnes of grain in October but we were forced to revise the figure to 2.2 to 2.3 million tonnes because of a lack of maize,” Prysyazhnyuk said.
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