Rain may cut Ukraine winter grain area by 20 percent

Heavy rains across Ukraine look set to shrink winter grain areas and slow exports but will not prevent the first shipments of maize to China under a landmark $1.5 billion deal signed last year, Agriculture Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk said on Tuesday. Prysyazhnyuk said in an interview winter grain area sown for 2014 harvest could shrink by about 20 percent, a much less drastic decline than forecast by Ukraine's grain lobby which last week said up to 60 percent could be lost.
"I think we could lose 1.5 million hectares (of winter grains," Prysyazhnyuk said, adding winter barley could fall to no more than 500,000 hectares from a planned 1.23 million, a decline of around 60 percent. He said winter wheat area could fall to 6.2 million to 6.3 million hectares against an initially anticipated 7.0 million. Ukraine has sown about 2.2 million hectares of winter wheat as of September 30 or 32 percent of the forecast. Farms sowed 4.6 million hectares of winter wheat at the same date in 2012, according to the ministry's data. The former Soviet republic has lost its mantle as the world's top barley exporter in the last few years while emerging as one of the leading exporters of maize.