The weather in Ukraine is delaying the harvesting of corn, which may affect prices in the second half of the season

The military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which has been going on for 300 days, has led to numerous victims among the population and destroyed many cities, causing losses that, according to the KSE Institute, have already reached $127 billion and continue to increase. In the total structure of direct losses, the share of agro-industry is $6.6 billion, but the indirect losses of the agricultural sector are estimated by experts of the KSE Institute and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy at $34.25 billion, and profits not received due to disruptions in logistics and the corresponding reduction in product prices make up 54% of indirect losses, i.e. more than 5 times the direct losses.

Additional losses are caused by unfavorable weather, which is not conducive to growing and harvesting. Periodic precipitation in the form of rain and snow does not allow machinery to enter the field, and in the western and northern regions the fields are covered with snow, which also makes harvesting impossible. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, as of December 16, 18.4 million tons of corn were harvested from 2.9 million hectares or 70% of the area with a yield of 6.27 tons/ha.

Rocket attacks on the energy infrastructure have led to restrictions in the energy supply of enterprises, which makes it difficult to dry corn, so agricultural producers are actively buying industrial generators to ensure the operation of dryers.

In the coming days, meteorologists predict an increase in temperature to 0...+4 ^o C and a decrease in the amount of precipitation, which in case of freezing of the soil at night will allow, at least slightly, to resume harvesting.

The purchase prices for corn in Ukraine, after falling last week, rose to $203-206/t or UAH 7,600-7,700/t from Monday due to the delay in harvesting and the shortage of offers from farmers in the near future. However, traders have enough of even limited offers, so they do not increase their purchase prices, taking into account the decline in global quotations. There are already 90 ships in the queue to the ports of Ukraine, which negatively affects the work of port terminals.

March corn futures in Chicago remain stable at $257/t, and January Ukrainian corn futures at $309/t.

Demand prices for Ukrainian corn from European buyers against the background of approaching New Year holidays and market saturation fell to $205-210/t DAP - Poland and $210-220/t DAP - Romania and Hungary.

Since the beginning of the season, Ukraine has exported 10.76 million tons of corn out of the 17.5 million tons predicted by the USDA, including 1.2 million tons in December, while last year these figures were 8 million tons and 1.97 million tons, respectively.

Exports of corn from the USA for the week of December 9-15 grew by 43% to 743,000 tons, and in total in the season reached 7.902 million tons (with the USDA forecast of 52.7 million tons), which is 3.45 million tons lower than last year's pace.

From July 1 to December 19, EU countries imported 13.45 million tons of corn against the USDA's forecast of 21.5 million tons.