KIEV: Ukraine is likely to double its exports of peas in the 2016-17 season to a record 500,000 tonnes thanks to a high harvest, analyst UkrAgroConsult said on Tuesday.
Ukraine is a major exporter of peas, shipping the commodity mostly to Asian markets. Favourable weather meant farmers achieved record productivity of 3.17 tonnes per hectare (47 bushels per acre), UkrAgroConsult said in a statement.
It said the harvested area rose to 239,000 hectares this year from 170,000 hectares a year earlier and the analyst said the pea harvest could rise to 745,000 tonnes from 378,000 tonnes. “Taking into account the considerable increase in the pea gross crop in Ukraine, in the 2016-17 season export capacity will be also be an all-time high,” UkrAgroConsult said. It said that in the 2015-16 marketing season Ukraine doubled pea exports to India, as well as increasing shipments to Africa.
Last season Ukraine opened new markets, such as Oman, Myanmar and Malta. It also exports a large amount of the crop to Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Kenya and Malaysia.
UkrAgroConsult said Russian pea exporters managed to oust Ukrainian suppliers from the European Union market. In 2015-16 shipments from Ukraine to the EU fell to 7,000 tonnes, while Russia supplied the EU with about 100,000 tonnes. Russia exported a total of 704,000 tonnes of peas last season, 58 percent of which went to Turkey, it said.
