Ukraine raises grain export forecast

Ukraine has raised its grain export forecast for the 2015/16 season to around 37 million tonnes from 36 million, buoyed by rising maize demand from abroad and expectations of a good crop next year, the agriculture minister told Reuters on Monday. Maize exports may total 16.7 million tonnes this season compared to an earlier estimate of 16 million, Oleksiy Pavlenko said. He added that wheat growers who suffered crop losses as a result of a severe drought last year and frost in winter would likely reseed much of the affected fields with maize.
The drought has put the harvest across as much as one third of Ukrainian farmland at risk of poor yields, he said. "The export of maize will be increased," he said. "We have every reason to reduce our ending stocks (of maize) to 2.8 million tonnes (at the season's end) from 4.1 a season ago."
He said export volumes could also include around 4 million tonnes of barley and 16.5 million tonnes of wheat. Ukraine has exported 24 million tonnes of grain so far this season, including 11.1 million tonnes of wheat and 8.9 million tonnes of maize. Pavlenko said uncertainty over the winter wheat crops sown for the 2016 harvest had prompted the ministry to keep relatively high wheat ending stocks to prevent a possible bread shortage in the country of 43 million.
He said Ukraine would have 4.5 million tonnes of wheat in stocks at the end of this season. "We are looking forward to what the situation will be this spring. Some regions have given us positive numbers that they have no such large percentage of reseeding - not 42 percent but only 20 percent," Pavlenko said. "But some regions told us that there is a problem with ice crust and freezing. Regions say that they have only 11 percent of unsprouted crops but there is also a risk zone - weak and sparse crops and it is 33 percent of the area," he added.
A severe drought in the summer and autumn across half of Ukraine forced farmers to stop sowing winter grains, and raised concerns about the 2016 grain harvest. Pavlenko said most of the affected area was likely to be reseeded with maize: "Maize is in focus, while some area could be reseeded with other spring cereals or even with sunflower." He declined to give the 2016 grain harvest forecast. Analysts have estimated it at 20.7 million tonnes of winter grains this year compared with 23.4 million last year.