Ukraine likely to have grain crop of 51 Mln tonnes in 2011 - forecast
KYIV. July 28 (Interfax) - Ukraine is likely to have a grain crop of 51 million tonnes this year compared with 39.3 million tonnes in 2010, the president of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences, Mykola Bezuhly, forecast on Thursday, while the Agrarian Policy and Food Ministry has kept its 2011 projection at 47 million tonnes.
Bezuhly, who is also first deputy minister of agrarian policy and food, made his forecast at a news conference in Kyiv. He estimated this year's spring crop at 33 million tonnes and the summer and autumn crop at 18 million tonnes.
He said spring crops had produced a yield of 2,950 tonnes per hectare and that spring crops harvested from about 80% of the total area sown with them had been threshed.
His estimate of the summer and autumn harvest was based on a projection that 3.62 million tonnes of maize would be gathered in with a per hectare yield of 5,000 tonnes, and that 1 million tonnes of crops used to make groats would be harvested.
He added that heavy rain had deprived Ukraine of about 6 million tonnes of grain.
The Agrarian Policy and Food Ministry argued, however, that it was too early to revise its 47-million-tonne projection, which was announced by Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk a week ago and was a revision of a projection of 46 million.