Annexation of the Crimea to the Russian Federation will not significantly affect the production volumes of the major oilseeds in Ukraine because the reporting region usually produced nearly 1% of the general harvest of Ukrainian sunflower seed, 1.2% of Ukrainian soybeans, and 0.7% of Ukrainian rapeseed, forecasted Yuri Lupenko, Director of the National Scientific Center Institute of Agrarian Economics, on March 26.
Also, Y.Lupenko forecasted that in 2014 the planted areas under oilseeds in Ukraine will remain at the previous year level.
At the same time, it is expected that sunflower seed planted areas in the current year will decrease to 4.95 mln ha, as opposed to 5.089 mln ha last year. In such terms the harvest of sunflower seed will decrease by 5.9% to 10.4 mln tonnes, against 11.1 mln tonnes in 2013, said the expert.
He added that in terms of the optimistic scenario (with the average yield of 2.21 t/ha) the harvest of sunflower seed will reach 10.9 mln tonnes, or remain almost at the level of 2013 (98.9%). In terms of the pessimistic scenario in 2014 Ukraine will not produce more than 9.9 mln tonnes of the oilseed (89.3% compared with 2013).
In the current year the planted areas under soybeans in Ukraine will increase to 1.477 mln ha, against 1.351 mln ha in 2013. At the same time, the production volumes will grow by 9.7% - to 3 mln tonnes. There is not expected increasing of rapeseed production in 2014. According to the forecast, the oilseed production in Ukraine will total 2.3 mln tonnes, down 2.6% compared with 2013, summed Y.Lupenko.
