Ukraine could lose 10%-15% of late crops

MOSCOW. Aug 8 (Interfax) - Ukraine could lose 10%-15% of its late crop harvest due to drought, Ukrainian media reported acting Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Taras Vysotsky as saying in an interview posted on the ministry's Telegram channel.

"There are two main types of crops - early and late. If we're talking about harvesting wheat, barley, peas, rapeseed, rye, oats and millet, this is the early group. The unusually hot weather affected it, but not critically. There was a worse effect in southeastern regions, but overall we almost reached the preliminary [gross harvest] forecast for these crops - lower by 2%-3%," Vysotsky said.

Crops that ripen later include sunflower, corn and sugar beet, which are primarily harvested in the fall, he said.

"Here there will probably be a more negative impact from unusual temperatures. It will be possible to say exactly already when the harvest is actually gathered, but today it looks like the harvest of these crops might be reduced by 10%-15%. There are regions where there will not be any reduction, where there was sufficient precipitation, which made it possible to get through the heatwave more easily. But there are regions where there is a critical impact," Vysotsky said.

The exact figures for crop losses due to this year's hot weather will be known in September-October, when most of the harvest is brought in, he added.

The ministry forecast in April that gross grain and oil crop production in Ukraine will total 74 million tonnes in 2024, including about 52.4 million tonnes of grains and 21.7 million tonnes of oil crops.

The forecast projects that farmers will harvest 19.2 million tonnes of wheat, 4.9 million tonnes of barley and 26.7 million tonnes of corn in 2024, compared to respectively 22.2 million tonnes, 5.7 million tonnes and 30.5 million tonnes last year. Soybean production is expected to increase to 5.2 million tonnes this year from 4.7 million tonnes in 2023, while the sunflower and rapeseed harvests are expected to drop to 12.4 million tonnes from 12.9 million tonnes and to 4.1 million tonnes from 4.7 million tonnes, respectively.

The gross harvest totalled about 82 million tonnes in 2023, including over 60 million tonnes of grains and about 22 million tonnes of oil crops.