News From Agro-Industrial Complex

As of October 14, Ukraine harvested nearly 5.5 mln tonnes of sunflower seed throughout 84% of planned areas, declared Yuri Melnik, the Minister of Agrarian Policy.

According to S.Kapshuk, the season-2008/09 of oilseeds processing was characterized with the record volumes of vegetable oils production. For the first time, Ukraine produced over 2.6 mln tonnes of vegetable oils, including over 2.5 mln tonnes of sunflower oil (the export volumes totaled 2.1 mln tonnes).

The growth of sunflower production to the level of 6.5 mln tonnes, the presence of the up-to-date technical base and advanced technologies, the excellent logistics assisted to the appearance of such results, marked the general director of "Ukroliyaprom".

According to the announcement, wheat sale volumes totaled 276.5 thsd tonnes, barley – 154.8 thsd tonnes. Besides, agricultural enterprises sold 7.6 thsd tonnes of sunflower seed from the beginning of the year.

As of September 1 of 2009, the average purchasing price of grains, offered by the Crimean enterprises, dealing with gain storing and processing, totaled 933.1 UAH/t, including wheat – 861.8 UAH/t (in January-August of the last year – 988.3 UAH/t and 1013.9 UAH/t respectively).

Source: AgriMarket.Info

Year-on-year growth in Ukraine's agricultural output slowed to 0.4% in January-August, compared with a gain of 3.8% in January-July.

The slowing indicates agricultural output in August was lower than in the same month last year, although the State Statistics Committee does not publish monthly output figures for agriculture.