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In January-February 2016, the production volumes of agricultural commodities in Ukraine decreased by 2.1% compared with the same period in 2015 at the expense of fall of animal husbandry commodities, announced the State Statistics Service of Ukraine on March 14.

The planted areas under spring crops in Ukraine will increase by nearly 1.7 mln ha, which requires additional resources provision. Due to adverse weather conditions in the autumn, agrarians failed to plant winter grains throughout nearly 0.9 mln ha, and winter rapeseed throughout 237 thsd ha. In addition, the planted areas of almost 600 thsd ha did not receive sprouts at all, declared the First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, Yaroslav Krasnopolskiy on March 1.

Rather limited number of proposals of large-scale grain lots on the market, the unstable economic situation and devaluation of the national currency rates, became the key factors influencing on price formation in the market segment of wheat in the first half of 2015/16 MY. The current article focuses on some challenges faced by the market participants, price trends, and the prospects for further developments.

When I started to work in development cooperation in the late 1980s, one-third of EU agricultural subsidies—about 10 billion euros annually (equivalent to about 17 billion euros today)—were spent on export subsidies. The EU Common Agricultural Policy was a central planning system with administratively fixed intervention prices for major commodities, huge stocks of cereals and milk products, and high import tariffs.