Ukrainian grain harvest at 11.7m mt so far, including 7.9 m mt of wheat

Ukraine's grain harvest progressed by 11 percentage points during the week ending July 28, with almost all regions now having started the harvest apart from the territory occupied by Russia around the Luhansk and Kherson regions, official data from the Ukrainian agriculture ministry showed Thursday.

Harvesting of winter crops started at the end of June, confirming the disappointing yields compared with the previous season.

During the week, Ukrainian farmers made eleven percentage points progress on the country's grains harvest to take it to 29% complete, with 11.7 million mt of grain in the bins.

That included 7.9 million mt of wheat harvested from 2.2 million hectares or 46% of the total area expected to be harvested in 2022.

The progress meant a 21 percentage point week-on-week improvement.

That also came as the average yield improved week-on-week again by 11% to 3.5 mt/ha, although that is still well below last year’s level of 4.4 mt/ha at the same stage.

The barley harvest has progressed by the same 15 percentage points to 61% complete, which corresponds to 3.5 million mt from 1 million hectares.

The yield for barley improved by 6% with the current average level standing at 3.5 mt/ha, which is also significantly lower compared to last year’s level at 4.3 mt/ha.

The rapeseed harvest showed the biggest increase through the week of 28 percentage points to the current 61% complete.

Farmers have put 1.7 million mt of rapeseeds into the bins, gathered from 702,000 hectares, which means the yield has improved by 10% to 2.5 mt/ha – on par with last year's level at 2.46 mt/ha.

The overall pace of the Ukrainian harvest is sharply delayed compared to last year's, with rain slowing down progress in some regions along with ongoing Russian shelling over Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk regions.

As for spring crops, the continued rain deficit in the southern regions developed into a drought, which started to compromise the yield potential, particularly corn and soybeans.

Rainfall is needed throughout the country to avoid a more severe deterioration of the yield outlook.