Areas under summer wheat in Ukraine largest in past 12 years but cannot make up for small areas under winter wheat - ministry

MOSCOW. May 17 (Interfax) - The areas sown with summer wheat in Ukraine this year could be the largest over the past 12 years and reach 285,000 hectares, compared to 191,100 hectares in 2022, the Ukrainian Agrarian Policy and Food Ministry said.

"Despite larger areas sown with summer wheat, they make up only 10% of the general area under this crop in Ukraine. Hence, this growth won't substantially compensate for the general reduction of the areas sown with wheat in the new season," Ukrainian media quoted the ministry's statement on its website.

As reported earlier, winter wheat was sown on 3.8 million hectares last fall, compared to 6.66 million hectares a year before.

A total of 247,000 hectares was sown with summer wheat in Ukraine as of mid-May, the Dnepropetrovsk region leading in this respect with 32,100 hectares under summer wheat. The Ternopol region had the largest area allotted for summer wheat in the country with 22,400 hectares in 2022 and the Zhitomir region with 21,800 hectares in 2021.

The ministry expects the overall harvest of grain and leguminous crops in marketing year 2023/2024 to reach 45 million tonnes, including over 16.5 million tonnes of wheat. The United States Department of Agriculture has released similar estimates of wheat harvest in Ukraine in its 2023/2024 agricultural projections.