Ukrainian agrarians last week sowed 585.2 thousand hectares of grain and leguminous crops, compared to 1 million 105.5 thousand hectares last week and 1267.2 thousand hectares a week earlier, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food reported on Friday.
According to it, May 25, the area under spring grain and leguminous crops reached 5.278 million hectares, or about 96.7% of the planned.
Spring sown areas are still lower than last year, when as of May 26 they reached 5.905 million hectares, but the lag has decreased again: 267.1 thousand hectares were sown during the same week in 2022.
The lag is mainly formed due to the most popular crops – corn and spring barley. They were sown by 16.4% and 17.8% less than last year, amounting to 3.266 and 759.6 thousand hectares respectively. As for corn, they have already surpassed the forecast of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy in 3.618 million hectares, while the barley is noticeably lower than the expected 1.041 million hectares.
At the same time, the area under other crops is already higher than a year ago. This concerns spring wheat – 261.9 thousand hectares (38.4%), buckwheat – 83.1 thousand hectares (44.0%), millet – 46.1 thousand hectares (11.6%) and pea – 135.6 thousand hectares (7.7%).
As it was noted by the Ministry of agrarian policy, the leaders in field work with grains and legumes this week were agrarians of the northernmost Chernigiv region – 94.5 thousand hectares, and the most sown spring crops in Poltava region – 626 thousand hectares.
According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, sunflowers covered 4.616 million hectares, which is already 8.2% more than last year’s figure, but still significantly below the expectations of 5.641 million hectares. Most of all this oilseed crops are planted in Kirovograd region – 576 thousand hectares.
Sown areas under sugar beet, on the contrary, exceeded the forecast of 220 thousand hectares and reached 240.9 thousand hectares, a third more than last year on that date, and higher even than in 2021, when they amounted to 226 thousand hectares.
Soybean area expanded to 1.636 million hectares and exceeded last year’s already 42%, and there is little left to the forecast of 1.841 million hectares. Kiev region is the leader with 188.8 thousand hectares.
According to the forecast of the Ministry from the end of March, in 2023 sowing areas of cereals and leguminous crops will amount to 10.24 mln ha, which is 1.4 mln ha less then in 2022, while oilseeds area will grow by 0.92 mln ha – to 8.85 mln ha. In particular, winter wheat crops will be 4166 thousand hectares (-834 thousand hectares against the previous year), spring wheat – 285 thousand hectares (+67 thousand hectares), winter barley – 536 thousand hectares (-255 thousand hectares).
