American Experts Forecast Ukraine’s Worst Grain Harvest in Sixty Years

The production of Ukrainian grain in 2000 will drop to 22.8 million tons, 14% below last year and be “the lowest since 1940.” This uncomfortable forecast is contained in a USDA report, Interfax-Ukraine informs. According to department experts, the crops will dwindle due to the reduction of sown area, inadequate use of mineral fertilizers and pesticides, along with bad weather conditions.

The US experts believe Ukraine will also cut its export of grain: it will export 1.2 million tons of fodder grain, including 500,000 tons of fodder wheat and barley. The American analysts forecast that Saudi Arabia, Belarus, and South Korea will be the main importers of Ukrainian grain.

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Agricultural Policy, by September 4 producers had completed the harvest of cereals, having brought in 21.05 million tons (without corn) on a sown area of 10.764 million hectares. Last year Ukraine harvested 1.9 million tons more of early grain. This year’s average yield is 19.6 quintals/hectare, the same as last year. The 2000 harvest of wheat was 10.8 million tons, 20% down from 1999 when 13.1 million tons were harvested.

Meanwhile, The Day was told by a League of Agricultural Entrepreneurs source that the Ministry of Agricultural Policy is really capable of reaching the 24.4 million ton target planned for this year. This could be helped in part by a good corn crop: it is expected to harvest 3.5 million tons (vs. 1.7 million tons in 1999). On the other hand, the source claims, it is not too difficult to overrate the harvest by about 2 million tons, for the balance sheet also includes grain furnished to farms with respect to their land shares, and no one knows the quality of the grain furnished in this way: it is supposed to be of the third and fourth grade, while in reality about 60% of this is sixth grade grain suitable only as fodder for livestock. The agricultural expert thinks it will be possible to harvest not more than 4 million tons of food grain, so the rest will have to be imported. In his words, representatives of some commercial structures are going right now to Kazakhstan to sign contracts on the purchase of edible wheat.