Ukraine will increase spring grain plantings 13 percent to 8.8 million hectares (21.74 million acres) to make up for winter grain losses, ProAgro, an agricultural researcher, said.
Corn plantings will probably rise 17 percent to 4.25 million hectares compared with a year earlier, ProAgro said in an e-mailed statement today. The spring barley area will rise 11 percent to 2.88 million hectares and spring wheat plantings also about 11 percent to 315,000 hectares, it said.
Farmers will have to re-seed 1.7 million hectares of winter grains, mostly wheat, because of drought last year, ProAgro said. Farmers lost 17 percent of winter wheat, it said.
Plantings of sunflower seed will increase 9.4 percent to 5.96 million hectares and soybean plantings will rise almost 24 percent to 1.39 million hectares, according to ProAgro. The rapeseed area may drop 20 percent to 696,000 hectares and sugar beet plantings may decline 8.2 percent to 500,000 hectares, it said.
Source: Bloomberg