Ukrainian farmers are likely to increase the area sown for maize by 11 percent to about 5.0 million hectares in 2013 due to stable foreign demand and expected high prices, Kiev-based analyst UCAB said on Thursday. Ukraine, the world's fourth-biggest maize exporter in 2011/12, raised the area to 4.5 million hectares in 2012 from 3.6 million hectares a year earlier.
The former Soviet republic, which harvested about 5 million tonnes of maize 10 years ago, boosted production to 22.7 million tonnes in 2011 and plans to harvest about 21 million tonnes this year. "Farmers plan to sow about 5 million hectares of maize next year. But a possible shortage of high quality seeds might ruin this plan," UCAB President Dr Alex Lissitsa said.
He said that some producers of maize seeds, located in southern Ukraine, had suffered from a drought and reduced seed output. Another UCAB analyst, Volodymyr Lapa, said that the high efficiency of maize planting would prompt producers to replace less profitable barley with maize.
"We see a steady decline of the area sown for barley. If the increase in maize area takes place, it will happen thanks to a decrease in the area of barley," Lapa said. Farmers sowed an average 4.8 million hectares for barley in 2003-2008, but cut the area to 3.8-4.2 million in 2011 and 2012.
Comments
Comments are closed.