November 15, 2011

Ukrainian grain harvest at 54 million tonnes

Ukraine's grain crop reached 54.1 million tonnes bunker weight as of November 14, 2011 compared with 41.2 million tonnes last year on the same date, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The ministry said in a report farms had harvested 96% of the planted area and the grain yield averaged 3.65 tonne per hectare. The yield totalled 2.84 tonne in 2010.

The ex-Soviet republic harvested 39.2 million tonnes of grain clean weight in 2010, which was affected by severe drought, but plans to increase the output to a record 53-54 million this year.

The ministry has said that a record harvest would be achieved thanks to the corn harvest of up to 22 million tonnes. Ukraine harvested 11.9 million tonnes of maize in 2010.

According to the ministry's data, farms harvested 18.5 million tonnes of corn as of November 14 against 11.8 million a year ago. Farms cropped 85% of the area sown for corn.

A jump in corn production has forced Ukraine to accelerate its exports and has already sold abroad about 500,000 tonnes of the commodity so far this month and about 1.7 million so far this season.

Ukrainian trade sources said last month that Japan bought one cargo of Ukrainian corn, in the first shipment of the grain between the countries in over a year.

The sources said Japan planned to buy further cargoes bringing its total purchases of Ukrainian corn to up to several hundred thousand tonnes.