January 18, 2012
Due to severe drought that hit Ukraine during sowing, about a third of its winter grain crops are in poor condition as of mid-January, analyst UkrAgroConsult said on Tuesday (Jan 17).
Some 83.3% of the sown area had sprouted, the consultancy said in a report. That is down from more than 90% at the same date a year earlier.
UkrAgroConsult said 67% of the sprouted crops were in good or satisfactory condition while 33% were in a poor state. The share of poor crops totalled 7% in January, 2011.
"No sprouts have come up on an area of 1.402 million hectares and, specialists believe, this area is subject to reseeding, because all viable seeds germinated in the soil and sprouted during the warm December period," the consultancy said.
Ukraine's Farm Ministry last month said at least two million hectares of damaged winter crops would be reseeded this spring mostly with barley and corn.
The ministry said it would persuade farmers to increase the area sown for spring barley in 2012 by 260,000 hectares to 2.85 million, corn by 672,000 hectares to 4.3 million, and other cereals by 141,000 hectares to 951,000.
Ukraine harvested a record 56.7 million tonnes of grain in clean weight in 2011 against 39.2 million in 2010.
The harvest included 22.4 million tonnes of wheat, 22.3 million tonnes of corn and 9.1 million tonnes of barley.