Nikolai Shishman, Deputy CEO of Aurum Group for agribusiness development, notes that due to the drought that lasted all summer in the East and South-East of Ukraine until harvesting, the volume of harvested crops is far lower than in the summer last year.
According to Shishman, drought and then downpours during harvesting led to the shortage of spring barley. Although some of the grain crops are still being threshed, it is possible even today to state that agricultural producers have not received the planned yield indexes for grain crops.
In particular, as of mid-August agricultural enterprises of Zaporizhia region threshed 198.2 thousand tons of spring barley – this is 99.79% of crops, the crop yield was 13.4 c / ha. By comparison, in the previous season the volume of harvested spring barley amounted to 395 thousand tons for this region, the yield reached 24.5 c / ha.
The situation with the indicators of winter wheat is a little bit better this year. The harvest has already been fully reaped, in Zaporizhia region about 1 million tons have been harvested, with an average yield of 25.2 c / ha, while in the previous season agrarians harvested here twice as much – 2.1 million tons, with an average yield of 34.61 c / ha.
If you look at the results of reaping the same crops, for example, in Vinnytsia region of the country where the amount of precipitation is 81 mm from March to May, 261,07 thousand tons of spring barley have been harvested this year, the yield was 34.8 c / ha and the volume of harvested winter wheat was 1 million tons, with the yield of 54.06 c / ha. Whereas in the marketing season 2016-2017, citizens of Vinnytsia region collected 341.8 thousand tons of spring barley, with the yield of 47.6 c / ha, and winter wheat figures were 1,713,800 tons, with the yield of 52.6 c / ha. Due to the absolute absence of precipitation during the formation of the vegetative mass and the formation of the ear, and then abundant rainfall that hit during the harvest time and suspended harvesting for almost 5-7 days and caused losses of up to 30% of cereals, there was a shortage of raw materials at the market this season. In particular, we are talking about spring barley, flax and mustard.
This year, grain traders offered minimally 4900 UAH for a ton of spring barley in the port at the start of harvesting and by the end of the harvest campaign, the price soared reaching a maximum value in the middle of August – 6800 UAH per ton.
The abundant rainfall during harvesting affected negatively not only the volume of harvested grain crops but also their quality: barley and wheat that were not collected from the fields began to sprout and mould in the ear, which automatically lowered the grain to the forage category. One pleasant fact is that there is only up to 10% of such kind of grain, as said Nikolai Shishman.