To date Ukraine
has cut 557kha compared to this time last year when it was reported they
had cut over a million hectares.
To me that doesn't
sound right as this season is at least ten days ahead of last year.
Could be weather
has slowed harvest a bit compared to last year or Crimea is not in this year’s
statistics which has over 1.5mha of arable land (although how much of that is
planted and will be cut is anyone’s guess) or last year’s figures were inflated
to appease a corrupt government that thought it was in control a soviet era centralised
farming system?
Anyhoo,
current reported total yield average is 2.79mt/ha compared to last
years 2.49mt/ha.
This breaks
down as wheat 59kha yielding 2.43mt/ha; barley 497kha yielding
2.84mt/ha; oilseed rape 41kha yielding 1.62mt/ha.
Which if
you add up those reported areas comes to more than the total
557kha and we haven’t even included peas (1kha, 2.16mt/ha).
So it looks
like those figures still contain, ahem, errors, which comes as no surprise as on
several occasions in the past I have been told to report harvest complete when
it wasn't otherwise it made the local head of administration look bad.
I suspect
it will take some time to break old habits.