Ukraine corn harvest faces ‘significant’ downgrade
By Agrimoney.com – Published 06/08/2010

The corn crop in Ukraine, the world’s biggest exporter of the grain outside the Americas, faces a “significant” downgrade because of the mounting heatwave, agribusiness giant Kernel has warned.

The oilseeds-to-silos group said that sunflowers, of which Ukraine was the world’s second-ranked producer last year, had survived relatively unscathed the hot weather which “has intensified of late”, bringing temperatures approaching 40 degrees Celsius.

The sunflower harvest was, provided het and dryness do not persist, on course top reach the 7m tonnes expected by the US Department of Agriculture, whose forecasts set global benchmarks.

However, corn “could be affected” by the weather, Kernel said, adding the USDA estimate of 13.0m tonnes “could be significantly reduced”.

More heat expected

The warning came hours after analysts at UkrAgroConsult cut by 350,000 tonnes to 12m tonnes their estimate for Ukraine’s corn crop, blaming the hot weather, which typically sets back pollination and the process of early grain formation.

“The Meteorological Office forecasts that the heat will last for minimum 10 days,” the Kiev-based group said.

“And grains are still forming on 25-30% of corn acreage and the heat may damage these crops.

“Consequently the yields may decline,” UkrAgroConsult added, cutting its estimate for the Ukraine average by 5% to 4.62 tonnes per hectare, with a figure of about 4 tonnes per hectare expected in Kharkov, Lugansk and Dnepropetrovsk.

Export slump

Kernel added that it expected Ukraine’s wheat harvest to finish up around 18m tonnes, in line with government forecasts, if nearly 3m tonnes below last year’s figure.

Barley output would fall by 1.3m tonnes to 9.5m tonnes.

Exports of the two grains would come in at 10.0m tonnes, excluding any shipments drawn from stocks carried over from last year, the company said.

Shipments from the 2009 harvest reached 15.2m tonnes.

Shares in Kernel, which is an exporter of corn and significant producer of sunflower oil, stood 1.3% higher at 63.00 zloty in morning trade in Warsaw.
© Agrimoney 2010