Agriculture

Monday, July 26

Harvests of wheat, barley and peas are going well. With high yields, Ukrainian farmers have harvested 14 million tons from 22% of the forecast area. To date, about half of the nation’s winter barley and peas crops have been harvested. This does not in...

Ukraine kept its position as the fourth largest source of food imports for the EU, after Brazil, the US and the UK during the first four months of this year. Ukraine’s food exports to the EU actually dropped by 19% yoy, according to the European Commission’s report “Monitoring EU Agri-Food Trade: Developments Janu...

Wednesday, July 21

Climate change means that agricultural zones are shifting north “by hundreds of kilometers,” Agriculture Minister Roman Leshchenko said speaking at a farming forum in Kyiv yesterday. “The temperature has risen by more than 1 degree Celsius in 10 years — this has a very serious impact on...

Tuesday, July 20

Germany’s Labor Ministry is speaking with its Ukraine counterparts about allowing Ukrainians to do seasonal farm work . AT present, there are only 20,000 international workers in Germany which are classed as ‘holiday workers.’ The country has signed a pilot agreement with Georgia and Ukraine to allow workers to enter...

Friday, July 9

In its first week, Ukraine’s farmland market has seen 322 transactions , Prime Minister Shmygal advised the Ukraine Reform Conference in Vilnius yesterday. “Myths about the mass sale of land and the export of Ukrainian black soil remain just myths,” he said. Currently li...

Thursday, July 8

Vowing a “record increase in tariffs,” Infrastructure Minister Alexander Kubrakov plans to raise iron and coal rail freight rates to those of grains. For years, farmers have complained that Ukrzaliznytsia grain rates subsidize below market freight rates for iron, coal, cement, and fertilizer producers. Across the board, all rates would increase by ...

Wednesday, July 7

The FAO’s global food price index has increased by 40% yoy, reaching the highest level in a decade , The Washington Post reports in a story headlined: “Surging global food prices put staple meals out of reach, from Nigerian jollof rice to Russian pasta and Argentine steak.” “A variety of factors ar...

After a 21% drop in grain exports last year, Ukraine now expects a 25% rebound in the grain exports for the marketing year that started last week. With exports expected to reach 56 million tons over the coming year, Ukraine will return to the record year of 2019/2020, when 56.7 million tons were exp...

Last summer’s drought, provoked declines of Ukraine’s top three grain exports: corn, down 24%, to 23 million tons; wheat, down 19% to 16.4 million tons; barley, down 17%, to 4.2 million tons. Food is Ukraine’s top export.

Friday, July 2

“It will help Ukraine integrate its power system with the European power grid, ” said Arup Banerji, World Bank Regional Director. “The project also helps Ukraine align with the European Green Deal.” With an installed capacity of 5.7 gigawatts, Ukrhydroenergo operates eight hydro...

In a heat wave that could affect grain harvests, 10 temperature records were set in Kyiv in June . The average monthly air temperature in Kyiv city in June was 21.3 °C. This is 1.8 °C above the norm for June.

Thursday, July 1

From today, Ukrainians can sell their farmland, a right largely lost after the communist takeover one century ago. “Ukrainians will become the real masters of their land, because they will be able not only to own it, but also to dispose of it freely,” Prime Minister Shmygal wrote yesterday on Telegram. “There is n...

The market starts with limits – sales are only permitted between Ukrainians for areas less than 100 hectares. The Economy Ministry estimates that the average price of a hectare will be around $2,000. On January 1, 2024, the market will expand to Ukrainian-owned companies and the size limit will increase to 10...

From the start, farmers cultivating up to 500 hectares will be eligible for bank loans sponsored by a new fund, the Partial Credit Guarantee Fund for Agriculture. When farmland goes up for sale, tenants have the first right of refusal to buy. Landlords must notify tenants in writing of ...

Dobrozem, an online farmland sales platform and consultancy, was launched today, announced the founders Alex Lissitsa, General Director of IMK agricultural holding, Dmytro Dubilet, a former executive at Monobank, the online bank. “The main idea of Dobrozem is to give people the op...

The Rada passed yesterday in first reading a bill that would mandate that bioethanol’s compose 5% of gasoline sold in Ukraine by next May . In Brazil, most bioethanol’s come from sugar cane. In the US, they come from corn.

Ukraine should not become a ‘Corn Republic,’ but should develop food processing and animal husbandry, says Gennadiy Bobov, owner of Panda, a farming group based in Kyiv region. “The simple sale of land will not lead to positive results and economic growth,” he said last week. “Land reform should benef...

Good rains and expanded cultivation are expected to increase Ukraine’s wheat harvests by 21% yoy during the new July-June marketing year, forecasts Agritel, the consulting arm of Argus Media. The latest forecast is for 30.5 million tons, breaking the record set in 2019-2020.

China’s trade war with Australia could lead to a doubling and tripling of Ukraine’s grain exports to China, Mykola Gorbachov, President of the Ukrainian Grain Association, tells Argus Media after signing a binational deal in June. This year, Ukraine has nearly tripled its barley exports to China. Ukraine no...

To turn around Ukraine’s declining dairy production, the government should extend $200 million a year in support to the sector, Vadym Chaharovsky, head of Ukraine’s Union of Dairy Enterprises, told reporters on Tuesday. By contrast, he said, the EU’s dairy subsidies amount to €10 billion a year. Ukraine also should stop import...

New markets opened this year for Ukraine’s dairy exports: Argentina, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Libya. Last year, Ukraine doubled imports of dairy products, to $304 million, while seeing exports fall by 17%, to $226.6 million.

This year, Ukraine’s milk production continued its steady fall, dropping by 5.2% through April, compared to the same first four months of 2020. Of the 2.52 million tons, dairy production was stable at 902,000 tons, but household production fell by 7.6%, to 1.6 million tons.

Wednesday, June 23

Well-timed rains are pushing this year’s harvest to a record 100 million tons of grains, oilseeds and beans, Nikolay Gorbachov, president of the Ukrainian Grain Association predicted at the recent International Grains Council’s Grain Conference. “What I can tell you about Ukraine is the conditions are just p...

Gorbachov’s predictions for this year’s harvests: corn – 37 million tons, up 22%; wheat – 30 million tons, up 20%; sunflower seeds – 16.5 million tons, up 28%; and canola – 2.5 million tons, unchanged. The headline on the farming news site from Weste...

Moving a bumper harvest to the sea ports will not be a problem , says Gorbachov. Ukraine now has 28,000 rail hopper cars, almost triple the 10,000 of three years ago. “We have no more deficit of these hoppers, and we can move grain easily to the ports,” he said. ...

With the grain marketing year ending next week, Ukraine’s exports in tons are down by 22% yoy, to 43.4 million tons. But with global food prices up 40% yoy, Ukraine’s grain exports in dollars are expected to be unchanged from one year ago. Total grain production for the marketing year, ending J...

The start of a limited farmland market on July 1 should boost Ukrainian harvest yields , Bloomberg reports in a story: Ukraine will introduce long-awaited land reforms next month just as food prices rise to the highest in almost a decade. Harvest yields for corn, Ukraine’s largest crop,...

The farmland market is designed to be transparent, Agriculture Minister Roman Leshchenko writes in an Atlantic Council essay: “Land reform can make Ukraine an agricultural superpower.” “Once Ukraine’s land market opens, all transactions will be tracked to record buyers and sellers, along with the price and the source of paym...

Wednesday, June 16

Helping to cut food inflation, no area in Ukraine is threatened by drought this summer, Tetyana Adamenko, head of the agro weather department of Ukraine’s Hydrometeorological Center, told Interfax-Ukraine yesterday. “The situation is very good, the soil is an excellent source of moisture...

Thursday, June 10

Ukraine’s exports to the EU have increased by more than one third — or $2.7 billion — so far this year , Prime Minister Shmygal announced yesterday at a Cabinet meeting. Growth picked up speed from a 12% increase registered for January-March, compared to the same period last year, In 2020, 41% of Ukrai...

Tuesday, June 8

Global food prices increased by 40% yoy, reported the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. After a 5% jump in May over April, the FAO Food Price index increased by 121.7 points, just short of a record high hit a decade ag...

Concorde Capital’s Evgeniya Akhtyrko wrote: “The recent growth of global food prices is mostly attributed to increasing demand driven by a massive throwing of public money for pandemic fighting around the world. The recent acceleration of consu...

China’s growing appetite for wheat and soybeans, a severe drought in Brazil, growing demand for vegetable oil for biodiesel, and supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic were cited last week by the Financial Times as reasons for rising food prices. “The drought in Brazi...

Two thirds of Ukraine’s farmland is at risk of drought due to climate change, Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Roman Leshchenko told the Ukraine 30 Ecology forum yesterday. “Climate change is taking place and in fact two thirds of our territory is becoming a zone of risky agricul...

Ukraine’s Soviet-era irrigation system has largely collapsed, according to an explanatory note accompanying a Rada bill to allow farmers to create water cooperatives. In 1990, the last year of the Soviet Union, “hydraulic reclamation” was carried out on 23 milli...

Of Ukraine’s 41.5 million hectares, 57% need some form of irrigation. The bill’s note says18.7 million hectares need constant irrigation and 4.8 million need periodic irrigation. Expected to pass this year, the bill would break the state monopoly on setting water rates,...

After last year’s drought caused up to $4 billion in crop losses to southern farmers, the Agriculture Ministry is launching a pilot project to restore irrigation systems in Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia regions. Minister Leshchenko writes on Facebook: “We will rebuild and exp...

In Odesa alone, the government is spending $92 million this year in a crash effort to restore irrigation . If the Rada passes the irrigation bill, Leshchenko tells the Kyiv Post he expects the EBRD and the World Bank to loan Ukraine $2 billion to rebuild its irrigation systems.

Wednesday, May 26

Through 2025, the price of farm land should double, thanks to the new land market that starts July 1, Prime Minister Shmygal, told the Ukraine 30 land forum yesterday. In addition, local governments should see rents more than double on their farm land, from 7% of estimated value to 18%, he predicted. ...

Almost 10% of Ukraine’s farm land is farmed off the books, costing the state as much as $1 billion in lost taxes annually, reports the Association of Agrarians of Ukraine. Lease payments on these tax-dodging schemes total as much as $2.5 billion, the group’s chairman, Alexander Vasilivsky, complained to Roman Leschchenko,...

Tuesday, May 25

During the 20-year ban on farm land sales, Ukraine’s state has lost the equivalent of “almost two Crimean peninsulas,” to land thefts by “businessmen and politicians,” President Zelenskiy said yesterday at Ukraine 30, a land forum. About 5 million hectares of state land moved illegally into private hands, he said. Crimea’s territory is 2.7 million hectares. During t...

On July 1, a limited farm land market is to open. Sales only are allowed among Ukrainians and the limit is 100 hectares. In advance of this modest opening, farm land rents increased 6.5% yoy in 2020 to an average of 3,380 hryvnia/hectare, Ellina Yurchenko, a farmland expert for the Ukrainian Agrarian Business Club said ...

In the six-week runup to the market, the Rada should pass partial loan guarantees for small farmers and anti-corruption regulations , Kristina A. Kvien, US Embassy Chargé d’Affaires, told the forum. Kvien and Matti Maasikas, EU Ambassador to Ukraine, both stressed the need for Ukraine’s media to inform the public about the n...

The EU is allocating €50 million in grants to help Ukrainian small farmers buy land over the next two years, Katarina Maternova, deputy director general of the European Commission’s Directorate for Neighborhood and Enlargement, told the government’s Ukraine 30 forum on Monday.

Thursday, May 20

China’s Ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xianrong said that Chinese companies should invest in farming and processing food in Ukraine, Xinhua reports from an online forum held Tuesday: “Ukraine-China: The Future of Trade, Pulses, Grains, Oilseeds.” Fan notes that Ukraine’s food exports to China jumped 84% yoy, accounting for 45% of U...

Ukrainian food exporters should take advantage of a projected 24% jump in Chinese food consumption by 2024 , Oleh Sytnyk, the President of the Ukrainian-Chinese Friendship Society, said yesterday at another China-Ukraine food conference. Due to urbanization and growing incomes, “more and more Chinese famil...

Wednesday, May 19

Auctions of state or communal farm land will now take place openly through electronic auctions conducted on the Internet, under a bill adopted yesterday by the Rada. “Anyone with a computer and Internet access will be able to take part in the auction,” (Interfax-Ukraine). “According to the ministry, the winners of the bi...

Thursday, May 13

Opposition to allowing foreigners to buy farm land remains strong in Ukraine, according to a new poll by the Rating Sociological Group. Of the 2,000 respondents, 79% oppose allowing foreigners to buy farmland and 77% say the issue should be decided by a national referendum. Of ...

Thursday, May 6

In 2020, Agroton increased its net profit by 2.3 when compared to 2019 to $11.76 million, and its EBITDA increased by 14.6 times to $33.04 million, the company has revealed. Its revenue increased to $67.55 million, while gross profit was up 3.2 times, to $ 32.91 million. The assets of “Agroton” last year increased by 5.1% – up t...

Wednesday, May 5

Over the past six months, eight new international export markets have been opened for Ukrainian enterprises. This included 63 commodity items were registered in eleven countries and several international economic organizations, Interfax-Ukraine reports citing the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection.