REUTERS
Some 17.74 million tonnes of Ukrainian maize was exported in the 2017/2018 marketing year.
Ukraine is expected to boost maize exports a record high level of 22 million tonnes in the 2018/2019 marketing year (September 2018 through August 2019) due to high yields of this crop.
"As for maize, we expect a gross yield between 29.5 million and 30 million tonnes, and, accordingly, we expect large volumes of this maize to be exported," he said. "Our forecast for maize exports is, according to our estimates, 22 million tonnes this marketing year," Ukraine's First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Maksym Martyniuk said.
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According to him, Ukraine could for the first time start exporting large batches of maize to Europe, as maize shipments to the EU were insignificant before.
Martyniuk also said that the increase in the supply of this crop to Europe this year is possible only due to the fact some European countries have suffered from droughts, which have considerably reduced their gross harvest of this crop.
As UNIAN reported, the United States Department of Agriculture in August revised upwards the forecast for the yield of maize in Ukraine in 2018 by one million tonnes in comparison with the July forecast, to 31 million tonnes.
In 2017, Ukraine saw a 7.3% decrease in the yield of grain and leguminous crops from 2016, to 61.3 million tonnes. In particular, Ukraine harvested 24.1 million tonnes of maize.
In the 2017/2018 marketing year, Ukraine exported 17.739 million tonnes of maize.