KIEV: Ukrainian farmers have sown 5.7 million hectares of winter grains, 79 percent of the expected area, the agriculture ministry said on Friday.
Farmers have sown 5.1 million hectares of winter wheat, 477,000 hectares of winter barley and 161,000 hectares of rye, the ministry said.
The area under winter wheat was likely to total 6.1 million hectares, while the area of winter barley could reach 926,000 hectares, it said. Winter wheat accounts for around 95 percent of Ukraine’s total wheat area, while the share of winter barley reaches around 60 percent.
Last year, Ukrainian farmers sowed around 8 million hectares of all winter grains.
The 2017 grain harvest could total 61-63 million tonnes, allowing exports of up to 45 million tonnes of various grains in the 2017/18 season, Ukraine’s acting agriculture minister Maksim Martyniuk told Reuters last month. Ukraine harvested a record 66 million tonnes of grain in 2016 and exported 43.9 million tonnes in the 2016/17 season, which runs from July to June.
