The buckwheat harvest in Ukraine in 2025 is 15% lower than a year earlier, which is not a problem for the domestic market, but will lead to price increases due to frenzied demand provoked by the media, said Rodion Rybchinsky, director of the Ukrainian Flour Millers Association.
“As far as I understand, this year’s buckwheat harvest is already 15% lower than last year’s. Questions about its availability should be addressed not to processors, but to farmers engaged in agribusiness,” he said at the Agro2Food Profit forum in Kyiv on Wednesday.
The expert explained that farmers themselves decide what is profitable for them to sow—sunflowers, soybeans, rapeseed— and then defend their rights to export soybeans and rapeseed to the Ministry of Economy and the State Tax Service without paying a 10% export duty, or to sow buckwheat, which yields 1.3-1.5 tons/ha, and then sell it for UAH 20,000 per ton.
Responding to a question about the reasons for the rise in buckwheat prices this year, Rybchinsky said that there were no reasons, but prices would still rise.
“Some newspaper or Telegram channel started shouting this week that buckwheat is getting more expensive. People listened and rushed to the supermarket. They see that buckwheat is selling for 25 UAH/kg, and tomorrow it will be 30 UAH/kg. They bought it all up. The warehouses of processing plants are empty. Retailers are starting to ask the authorities, ‘Where is the buckwheat? ’ And it’s with the farmers, who are waiting for prices to rise to 40 UAH/kg and are not releasing the product. They are doing this because consumers have bought up all the product at 25 UAH/kg,” explained the head of the industry association.
Rybchinsky recalled that the rush demand for buckwheat, rye, and other products occurs steadily every three to four years.
“Ukrainians do not eat buckwheat in such quantities as the media try to portray. Buckwheat is primarily needed by people with diabetes. Other consumers can do without it, because Ukraine produces more corn and wheat groats than it needs for domestic consumption,” emphasized the head of the Ukrainian Flour Millers Association, urging Ukrainians not to react to the artificially created hype.
As reported, in the 2025 season, Ukrainian farmers reduced the area under buckwheat to 69,100 hectares, compared to 90,300 hectares a year earlier. As of October 24, buckwheat has been harvested from 86% of the production areas with a yield of 14 tons/ha, yielding 83.3 thousand tons, compared to 126.9 thousand tons a year earlier.
