Ukraine's winter grain harvests may fall
2012-02-02 17:29:49
Ukraine's harvest of winter grains could fall by 42-58 percent to between 10 and 14 million tonnes due to poor weather during sowing and wintering, the state weather forecaster said on Wednesday.
Tetyana Adamenko, head of the agricultural department of Ukraine's meteorological service, told Reuters that Ukrainian winter grains, which had suffered from a severe drought in July-November, now were hit by record frosts of minus 33 degrees Celsius (minus 27 Fahrenheit)."The situation is worsening.
Despite some snowfall in eastern and southern Ukraine, these levels are not enough to protect crops from the record frost," Adamenko said.She noted that fields in the Kherson region and Crimea in southern Ukraine had 1 to 3 centimetres of snow while the temperatures there fell to below minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit).
"The temperature last night fell to a critical level for crops of winter barley but we are waiting for even more serious frosts this night - critical for winter wheat," she said."We see satisfactory snow conditions in central, northern and western parts of Ukraine".
Ukrainian agriculture officials and analysts have said about 20 percent of winter grains had not sprouted due to a drought during the sowing, while 33 percent of the sprouted area were in a poor state.The Farm Ministry said at least 2.0 million hectares of damaged winter crops would be reseeded this spring mostly with barley and maize.
Adamenko said Ukraine might lose 40 percent of the sown area.
Ukraine sowed 8.4 million hectares for the 2012 winter grain harvest, including 6.7 million hectares of winter wheat, 1.4 million of winter barley.Farm Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk told Reuters last month that poor weather could reduce Ukraine's grain harvest to 44 to 46 million tonnes from 56.7 million in 2011.
He said the harvest of wheat might fall to 12 million tonnes this year from 22.3 million in 2011.Ukraine consumes about 12 million tonnes of wheat per season and only stocks from 2011 wheat harvest could allow the former Soviet republic to export wheat in the 2012/13 season.
Ukraine exported about 3 million tonnes of wheat in the first half of the current season and analysts expect that ending stocks could exceed 5 million tonnes.