Ukraine plans to complete the sowing campaign this year on June 5-10, good weather in May allowed to catch up the lag in April, First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy Taras Vysotsky said on the air of a single telethon on Saturday.
“If you look in general, we see that 85%, even closer to 90% of the plan set at 13 million hectares have already been implemented, that is, literally in early June, 5-10 June, the sowing season will be completely completed,” he said.
Vysotsky specified that sowing of early spring crops, such as spring wheat, barley, peas, oats, has already been completed, as well as sowing of sugar beet in the amount greater than last year.
“Sugar will be produced more than enough,” said the first deputy head of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy.
According to him, sowing of late crops – sunflower, soybean and also, partially, corn – is still going on.
“This year the share of oilseeds, namely soybeans, sunflower and rapeseed has increased. It is connected, first of all, with expensive logistics, respectively, the change of crop rotation for the crops, which have a higher price per ton, per unit of the proceeds,” – explained Vysotsky.
He clarified that at present the sowing season in some places lags behind the average statistical forecast up to one and a half to two weeks, but so far it is not critical.
The first deputy minister said that the first two decades of June will be critical. “Preliminarily colleagues from the Hydrometeorological Center say that such short, but quite intense rains should still fall in this period … We hope that for the growing season the next two decades it will still rain all over Ukraine”, – said Vysotsky.
