Expert: Up to 30% of farmers in Ukraine may reduce winter crops this year

In Ukraine, in 2023, 20-30% of farmers may reduce the amount of winter crops or refuse to plant winter crops at all due to problems with agricultural exports.

Denys Marchuk, deputy chairman of Ukrainian Agrarian Council, stated this at a briefing at Ukrinform.

"If we do not start exporting through the Black Sea and the solidarity lanes and Danube ports do not work properly, I predict that 20% to 30% of producers will simply be forced to reduce the area under winter crops or not work at all this season," he said.

Marchuk noted that, according to preliminary forecasts, the harvest of grains and oilseeds in Ukraine this year will be up to 76 million tonnes. Thus, Ukrainian farmers can potentially export about 48-50 million tonnes of grain in the current marketing year.

The expert says that to export such a volume of agricultural products, Ukraine needs to ship at least 4-4.5 million tonnes of food to foreign markets every month.

As Ukrinform reported, according to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine on August 7-14, almost half of Ukrainian agricultural producers (45%) do not plan to significantly reduce winter crops, and 38% intend to increase them compared to last season, mainly due to rapeseed.