The sowing of winter crops in Ukraine is going faster than last year, but due to the drought, the sowing area may decrease

Dry weather with higher than normal temperatures, which prevails in Ukraine, allows to speed up the harvesting of late crops and sowing of winter crops, but reduces the reserves of soil moisture, which worsens the conditions for sowing.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, as of September 26, 2.179 million hectares were sown with winter crops, including 1.038 million hectares with rapeseed, 1.024 million hectares with wheat, 74 thousand hectares with barley, and 42 thousand hectares with rye. Sowing pace is better than last year, when long rains delayed work. But this year, the situation is complicated by the lack of precipitation in August - September and in the next 7-10 days.

The Ukrhydrometeorological center reports that agrometeorological conditions in the second decade of September remained extremely unfavorable for sowing, but were satisfactory for the completion of vegetation of late crops. In most of the territory there is a long-term moisture deficit, for 30-40 days there was no effective rainfall sufficient to moisten the soil. Soil drought is intensifying on 50-60% of the areas where it was planned to sow winter crops. At the same time, the sunny weather promotes the harvesting of late crops and the accumulation of sugars in beets, fruits and berries.

The agrarian department of Odesa Oblast reported that the sowing of winter wheat in the region was suspended due to a lack of moisture. It will be extended if there are minimal precipitations within 2 weeks, otherwise in 2024 we will not have to count on even some average indicators. Currently, about 3% of farmers in the region have sown grain in dry land, but it is not known whether they will get a positive result.

Odesa was the first to start sowing winter crops, in particular rapeseed. But in the conditions of rainfall deficit, seedlings were obtained only in fields with irrigation or where moisture storage technologies are used, while rapeseed died in the rest of the areas, - the OVA reported.

Extremely low prices for wheat in Ukraine in the current season also force farmers to reduce the area under winter wheat in favor of rapeseed in order to minimize losses. However, the plans to increase the area under winter rape prevented the implementation of dry weather in August and September, so farmers will have to sow the prepared areas with winter wheat and barley.