Ukraine has almost completed the 2014 wheat harvest, threshing 24.4 million tonnes in bunker weight from 99 percent of the sown area, the agriculture ministry said on Tuesday. The former Soviet republic harvested 22.3 million tonnes of wheat in clean weight last year. Bunker weight is usually 5 to 7 percent heavier than clean weight.
The ministry said in a statement that farmers planned to increase the area sown for the 2015 winter wheat harvest slightly to 6.2 million hectares, from around 6.1 million hectares this year. Winter wheat accounts for more than 95 percent of Ukrainian wheat production.
Markets are concerned about the overall quality of Ukraine's wheat harvest due to rain damage which should mean the country produces more wheat for animal feed and less higher grade bread-making grain this year. The share of milling wheat could decrease to around 60-65 percent this year from 75 percent in 2013, analysts and traders have said. Local media reported that domestic millers were pressing the government to suspend wheat exports until more was known about domestic supplies of milling-quality wheat.
But the ministry said last week Ukraine saw no need to limit grain exports. UkrAgroConsult agriculture consultancy said in a report on Thursday that Ukraine exported 1.8 million tonnes of wheat so far this season, of which about 1.1 million tonnes was milling quality. "So, another some 7 million tonnes of milling wheat can be exported by the end of the season without threatening the country's security," UkrAgroConsult said. Ukraine exported a total of 9.2 million tonnes of wheat in 2013/14.