UCAB forecast: how the sown areas for grains will decrease in 2024

The Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB) has calculated that in 2024, the acreage under oilseeds may decrease by 16%, and under grains by 17% compared to the previous year. This was reported by Svitlana Lytvyn, Head of UCAB Analytical Department, in an interview with Delo.ua.

"When predicting the scenarios, we consider optimistic and pessimistic options. According to the optimistic scenario, the planted areas will decrease by 3% to 18.6 mln hectares, while the area under oilseeds will increase by 1% to 8.4 mln hectares. However, under the pessimistic scenario, these figures will be 17% down to 16.0 million tons and 16% down to 6.9 million hectares, respectively," the expert said.

Lytvyn also noted that crop production has been unprofitable for the second year in a row. In 2022, all types of grains and oilseeds made losses, and in 2023, some oilseeds have already become minimally profitable. This poses serious financial challenges for farmers in terms of purchasing inputs for crops.

Mykola Solsky, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, also warned that the grain harvest in 2024 would be smaller due to lower profitability. He did not rule out the possibility of leaving some fields unseeded due to high costs and low profitability.

Already in January-November 2023, exports of Ukrainian agricultural products amounted to $19,637 million, which is 7% less than in the same period of 2022. However, the share of agricultural products in the country's total exports increased to 62%, which indicates the leadership of the agricultural sector in the export structure.

The further share of sown areas and harvest in 2024 will depend on the development of the market situation and the specifics of each farm.