January 31, 2012

Ukraine's 2012 corn crop to rise 10%

By sowing a larger area this year, Ukraine is likely to increase its corn harvest by 10% to 25 million tonnes, analyst Ukrainian Agribusiness Club said on Monday (Jan 30).

"Ukraine has raised its corn harvests for 10 years in a row from 3.6 million tonnes in 2001 to 22.5 million in 2011," the analyst said in a statement.

"This year, the area under corn could be increased to 4.5 million hectares and the harvest might total 25 million tonnes".

Ukraine's Farm Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk has said farms were likely to increase the area sown for corn to 4.3 million hectares this year. He said the increase would compensate the fall in the area under winter wheat damaged by poor weather. According to weather forecasters, about a third of Ukrainian winter wheat crops are in poor state and could reseeded this spring.

Analyst ProAgro forecast the corn area at 4.4 million hectares in 2012. Ukraine sowed 3.5 million hectares for corn in 2011. Corn is set to become the top Ukrainian export commodity in the 2011/12 season and the former Soviet republic has exported about six million tonnes of the commodity in the first half of the current season.

Ukraine has also exported 2.7 million tonnes of wheat and about 1.8 million tonnes of barley.