Interest of farmers to winter crops in Ukraine grows in past two or three years

12:00, 02.03.2017 2 min read

A trend of expanding areas with planted winter crops was seen in the past two or three years in Ukraine, Director General of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB) Taras Vysotsky has said.

"In the mid-2000s there was a trend of reducing the areas with winter crops in favor of spring crops, but five years ago this trend has been changed. Over the past two years winter crops started to return the lost ground," UCAB said, citing Vysotsky.

He said that it is primarily due to the changes in climatic conditions, possibility of performing production operations in spring as well as stable profitability of winter crops.

"In the spring there are increasingly unfavorable conditions for sowing spring crops which does not allow completing sowing on time, and as you know, 10-15% of the yield depends on the timing of sowing. If you count the factors of the harvest shortfall, the profits of winter crops are more stable. Currently, we are witnessing the return of 10-15% of the areas with winter crops that were used to be sown with spring crops," he said.

He also said that the figures of the two previous yields indicate that more and more companies are starting to consider wheat not as a part of the crop rotation and a possibility of paying rent fees to the landowners, but as a marginal crop. Farm businesses set goals to get as a minimum 6 tonnes per ha instead of 4 tonnes per ha.