Ukraine's 2024 grain harvest may decrease to 54.6 million metric tons from around 60 million tons in 2023, mostly due to unfavourable weather, the newly appointed Ukrainian agriculture minister said on Friday.
Vitaliy Koval told Reuters the harvest could include 21.8 million tons of wheat and 25.8 million tons of corn.
Ukraine's major farm producers union UAC sees corn output at up to 23 million tons, while APK-Inform agriculture consultancy put the harvest at 26.8 million tons.
APK-Inform said 22.5 million tons of corn could be exported this season.
Most Ukrainian grain regions were affected by an abnormal heatwave this year, which caused a significant decrease in the late crops' yield, he said.
Koval said early grains, like wheat, lost only 2% in the yield while the yield of late crops - corn and oilseeds - could decease by 10% to 15%.
The minister said Ukraine, grain net-exporter, would keep its exports at a high level despite a smaller harvest and could ship abroad 16.2 million tons of wheat and 21.7 million tons of corn in the 2024/25 season.
Traders exported 18.4 million tons of wheat and 29.4 million tons of corn in 2023/24 also due to high stocks from previous seasons, when key Ukrainian seaports were blocked because of the Russian invasion.
Koval said the ministry would carefully monitor the export of wheat as export demand is high while the supply is limited.
He said the government was ready to suspend exports if export volumes would exceed the agreed 16.2 million tons limit.
Ukraine's grain exports in the 2024/25 July-June season stood at close to 9.8 million metric tons as of Sept. 25 versus almost 6.2 million tons a season earlier.
The volume included 5.6 million tons of wheat, 2.7 million tons of corn and almost 1.3 million tons of barley.
The farm ministry has said milling wheat dominated the exports while Koval said the share of milling wheat in the overall wheat output totalled around 43%.
He gave no more details, while SGS, a multinational company which provides verification and certification services, said this week the share of milling wheat with at least an 11.5% protein content in Ukraine's 2024 wheat harvest fell to 35.5% from 37.2% in 2023.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; editing by David Evans)