5 million tons of grain harvested in Ukraine - agriculture ministry
2012-07-06 15:00:03
As of July 6, Ukrainian farmers harvested 26% of early grains, or 2.67 million hectares of the planned acreage of 10.3 million hectares. Gross harvest to date is 4,978,000 tons with an average yield of 18.7 centners per hectare.
This was announced by Director of the Department for Plant Growing Oleksandr Demydov, the press service of the agriculture ministry reported.
"26% of the acreage was harvested, that is 2.6 million hectares. We have 5 million tons of grain today, including 3.3 million tons of wheat and 1.5 million tons of barley. Harvesting of rye, peas and rape is proceeding. Odesa region has threshed 1 million tons of early grain crops," he stressed.
Oleksandr Demydov also added that, due to drought in some southern and eastern regions, the situation with early wheat and barley is difficult.
"Of course, this year the situation is complicated. In southern provinces, about 200 thousand hectares of crops were affected by drought. This is a number of districts in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions," he said.
At the same time, the director of the department said that the harvesting campaign has already involved the central regions of this country: Kyiv, Khmelnytsky, Vinnytsia and Cherkasy regions, where the bulk of wheat was sown, and where rainfall was sufficient. Therefore, the average yield of wheat and barley there is at the level of the average annual rates - over 30 centners per hectare.
He also added that, with such a sultry weather, wheat and barley are less affected by pests and diseases, so nearly 70% of the crop supplied to the elevators is food grain. In general, according to the ministry's forecast, the yield of early grain crops is expected to reach 20-21 million tons. It should be reminded that Ukraine averagely consumes about 6 million tons of food grain, while 6.5 million tons of last year's grain harvest is available at the elevators now.
The director of the department also said that, under favorable weather conditions, the harvest of late crops, particularly corn, is expected to be 23 million tons. In general, gross yield is projected at around 45-47 million tons.