Agrotrade agricultural holding has started sowing mustard in the fields of Kupiansk district, Kharkiv region, with 600 hectares of land allocated for the crop, the company’s press service reported on Facebook.
“Mustard is the crop that best tolerates deteriorating weather conditions, so we started with it. In addition, we continue sowing spring wheat in the weakened areas allocated for winter wheat. Currently, the soil is well cultivated and has sufficient moisture, which is conducive to high-quality sowing. So we don’t see any risks for the sowing campaign yet,” said Oleksandr Ovsyanyk, Director of Agrotrade’s Agricultural Department.
He added that the company plans to start sowing sunflower and corn in parallel on April 11, and the sowing campaign is expected to be completed by May 10.
The Agrotrade Group is a vertically integrated holding company with a full agro-industrial cycle (production, processing, storage and trade of agricultural products). The company cultivates over 70 thousand hectares of land in Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv regions. Its main crops are sunflower, corn, winter wheat, soybeans and rapeseed. It has its own network of elevators with a simultaneous storage capacity of 570 thousand tons.
The group also produces hybrid seeds of corn and sunflower, barley, and winter wheat. In 2014, a seed plant with a capacity of 20 thousand tons of seeds per year was built on the basis of Kolos seed farm (Kharkiv region). In 2018, Agrotrade launched its own brand Agroseeds on the market.
The founder of Agrotrade is Vsevolod Kozhemiako.
From the second half of 2022, Germany is facing a shortage of mustard due to a lack of mustard seeds for its production, the shortage is caused by Russian aggression in Ukraine, since these two countries provide a total of 80% of German imports of this agricultural raw material.
This opinion was expressed by Markus Weck, CEO of the German food industry association Kulinaria Germany, for the German edition Die Welt.
“There is already a shortage of raw materials for mustard. And in the coming weeks and months, the shortage will increase – up to complete supply disruptions. The shocks caused by the coronavirus pandemic are practically nothing compared to what is happening in the markets right now,” the publication quotes the Kulinaria CEO.
According to him, 80% of mustard seeds come to Germany from Ukraine and Russia, and its shortage is already forcing German mustard producers to reduce its production and raise prices for their products. Weck clarified that the prospects for the German mustard market remain uncertain until the end of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Sowing should take place in the next two weeks. However, this is unlikely in Ukraine, given the current situation. But this means that an important supplier of raw materials for mustard producers is lost in the summer. And whether Russia will then export goods is also unknown,” the expert explained.
The Kulinaria CEO stressed that German mustard producers will have enough stocks of raw materials for a period of several weeks to several months.
Mustard consumption in Germany is one of the highest in the world and is used to prepare a large number of German traditional dishes.
