Ukraine forecasts record corn harvest forecast

In the past 10 years Ukraine has boosted its maize production by 400%. And for 2013 initial estimation is an all-time-high maize output of 30 million tonnes.

The agriculture ministry had forecast the output at 26 million tonnes, the same volume as expected by most of Ukrainian agriculture analysts and weather forecasters.

Ukraine expert agency ProAgro predicted the 2013 maize harvest to be 26.8 million tonnes while UkrAgroConsult expects an output of 25.5 million tonnes.

Ukraine harvested 472,000 tonnes of maize from 2% of the sown area as of September 9. The yield totalled 5.21 tonne per hectare, the report of the agricultural ministry said.

But rains across most Ukrainian regions, which are likely to last during coming weeks, could have bearing on the pace of harvesting and reduce maize quality. “We are not talking about volume because rains could not reduce the weight, but rains could hit the quality,” local media have reported.