Ukrainian Agricultural Policy and Food Minister Mykola Prysiazhniuk announced this at a briefing at the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on Wednesday, a UKRINFORM correspondent reported.

"The harvesting of early grain crops is ending. They were harvested and threshed on an area of 7.7 million hectares, or 77% of the total area. A total of 18.5 million tons of grain were harvested, with an average yield being 2.88 tons per hectare," Prysiazhniuk said.

The minister said that a number of regions had already reached a figure of one million tons in the harvesting of grain crops. In particular, Odesa region harvested more than 1.5 million tons, Kharkiv and Vinnytsia regions 1.4 million tons each, with Cherkasy, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions also harvesting a million tons of grain each. It is expected that Kirovohrad region will also thresh a million tons of grain.

Prysiazhniuk also said that 11.6 million tons of wheat had been harvested on an area of 4.6 million hectors. A total of 5.2 million tons of barley were threshed on an area of 2.7 million hectares, or 80% of the target. Some 294,000 tons of rye were harvested on an area of 131,000 hectares.

"The harvest is expected to be lower than in 2011 due to adverse weather conditions, but the quality of grain is much higher," Prysiazhniuk said.

He also added that the gross grain harvest would fall globally due to bad weather.

ukrinform.ua