Purchase prices for barley in Ukraine are falling against the background of reduced demand

The 2024/25 season was marked by high starting prices for all agricultural crops. Thus, feed barley prices in Black Sea ports have risen by 5-8% since the beginning of the season to $168-172/t or UAH 8,100/t, which was 12-15% higher than last year. But during the last week, exporters reduced prices by 50-150 hryvnias/t to 7,900-7,950 hryvnias/t, and some altogether stopped purchases due to the lack of export demand for the coming month, although the pace of barley exports is three times higher than last year.

In 2024/25 FY (as of August 7), Ukraine exported 661,000 tons of barley compared to 203,000 tons at the same time last year.

As of August 2, Ukraine harvested 4.82 million tons of barley from 1.294 million hectares with a yield of 3.72 tons/ha. In 2023/24, Ukraine collected 5.8 million tons of barley, of which it exported 2.5 million tons. In the current season, the area of winter barley sown decreased compared to last year from 536 to 470 thousand hectares, and the spring one slightly less - from 810 to 783 thousand hectares due to high demand for malting barley in 2023.

The increase in the area of sowing and harvesting of barley in the EU in 2024/25 MR has sharply reduced the demand for Ukrainian malting barley, and malt factories have already accumulated stocks of raw materials that will last until the end of the season.

Purchase prices for brewing barley in Ukraine at the beginning of the season were UAH 7,000/t with delivery to the factory, and during the month they rose to UAH 7,400-7,800/t, but the premium for brewing quality does not exceed UAH 100-300/t, although last year it reached 2500-3000 UAH/t. Some farmers are selling malting barley as fodder, not expecting prices to rise in the near future.

The reduction of the barley harvest in the Russian Federation will be compensated by the increase in production in the EU, so we should not expect an increase in export prices yet, especially given the increase in the supply of fodder wheat in the EU (due to rains in Germany and France) and corn from South America, as well as the forecasted record harvest corn in the USA.

Ukrainian farmers hold back sales of barley in anticipation of better prices, but soon competition with Russian and Romanian barley will intensify on the world market, so exporters will have to lower prices to boost sales.