Ukrainian farmers could replace grain exports with domestic processing - 19.03.2020

Ukrainian farmers could replace grain exports with domestic processing - 19.03.2020
Ukrainian farmers export annually 40 million tons of grain in the form of raw materials that could be processed at local enterprises.
 
The authors of bill No. 3208 “On progressive land relations” are convinced of this, people's deputies Ruslan Knyazevich and Roman Romanyuk, writes AgroPolit.com.
 
“About 40 million tons of grain exported every year as raw materials could be processed at domestic enterprises, including as animal feed and poultry,” the explanatory note to the bill says.
 
The document notes that over the years of independence of Ukraine, the area under sugar beets has decreased in favor of increasing sunflower crops.
 
Statistics on the decrease in cattle stock are also provided.
 
“The area of ​​land under fodder crops occupies only 1.8 million hectares from 11.9 million hectares. The area under sugar beets decreased by 5 times and amounted to 316 thousand ha. At the same time, the area under sunflower expanded by 3.6 times, up to 6 million hectares. Due to an increase in the cultivation of industrial crops by 10%, the area under cereal crops increased, reaching 16 million hectares. At the same time, sown area as a whole decreased from 31.7 million ha to 25 million ha. Recently, significant changes in the technology of crop production have taken place in the world, and it has contributed to the increase in productivity at times. Yields in the Ukrainian crop sector increased by an average of only 20%, ”the authors of the document noted.
 
According to the document, the number of cattle since 1990 in Ukraine decreased from 25 million heads to 3.5 million heads, the number of pigs from 19.9 to 6.1 million heads, and the number of sheep from 9 million to 1.3 million heads. After a reduction from 255 to 123 million heads, the poultry stock resumed at 230 million in 2013 and again decreased to 204 million heads in 2018.
 
Recall that from the beginning of the 2019/20 marketing year (July 2019 - June 2020) as of March 18, 2020, grain exports from Ukraine reached 43.63 million tons