August 27, 2008

Ukraine's milling wheat of high-quality grades 1-3 in the total wheat harvest to-date has fallen to 11 percent from 40 percent in 2007, with the remaining 89 percent being feed wheat, the Agriculture Ministry said Tuesday (August 26).

The ministry said the proportion of fourth-grade wheat has fallen to 22 percent from 32 percent in 2007, while the proportion of fifth-grade wheat rose to 13 percent from 8 percent and sixth-grade wheat rose to 54 percent from 20 percent in 2007.

Ukraine harvested 26.596 million tonnes of wheat to August 21 compared with the total wheat harvest in 2007 of about 14 million tonnes.

The agriculture ministry expects total grain harvest this year to be about 48.7 million tonnes against 29.3 million tonnes in 2007.

Grain exports in the 2008-09 marketing year are expected to rise to 22.6 million tonnes, compared with 3.7 million tons the previous year.