Ukraine corn production seen falling this year

Ukraine’s corn production and exports are expected to fall this year with yields set to fall after extreme heat while crops were sown in April, Mykola Gorbachov, president of the Ukrainian Grain Association (UGA) said on Wednesday.

“During the planting time in April we had really hot weather,” he told the International Grains Council’s annual conference, adding it would lead to lower yields.

UGA estimates that corn production will fall to 25.5 million metric tons in 2024/25, down from the previous season’s 29.6 million with exports falling to 20.5 million from 26 million.

The IGC also currently forecast Ukraine’s corn exports at 20.5 million tons although its projection for production is slightly higher at 27.7 million tons.

Ukraine’s harvested a record corn crop of 42.13 million tons in 2021, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, just a month before Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Gorbachov said Ukraine had lost six million hectares of agricultural land because of the conflict out of a total of 25 million hectares.

“Of course it is a huge impact,” he said.

USDA forecasts that area of corn harvested in Ukraine will fall to 3.8 million hectares in 2024/25, a 13-year low.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Nigel Hunt; editing by Jason Neely)