News From Agro-Industrial Complex

Ukraine harvested 42.85 million metric tons of grain in the year to Oct. 20 on 14.5 million hectares, or 94% of the total area to be harvested, with an average yield of 2.95 tons a hectare, the Agriculture Ministry said Wednesday.

Grain stocks in Ukraine on Oct. 1 totaled 23.4 million metric tons, 7% less than on the same date last year, the state statistics committee said Thursday. The grain stocks included 13 million tons of wheat, 6.2 million tons of barley, 1.1 million tons of corn and 900,000 tons of rye.

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".