Ukraine’s agriculture ministry is yet to release its official forecast for 2025/26.
Trade sources expect the wheat crop to be in the range of 22 million-22.5 million tonnes; this would be in line with or slightly below the previous year. Meanwhile, local analytical agency APK-Inform estimated the wheat crop at 21.5 million tonnes.
The State Statistics Service of Ukraine has not yet released its final data on the crop harvested in 2024/25. As of January 2, 22.4 million tonnes were harvested; some sources expect the final volume to be closer to 23 million tonnes.
Barley crop update
For barley, trade sources expect the 2025/26 crop to be slightly lower year on year at 5 million-5.2 million tonnes, down from 5.55 million tonnes. Meanwhile, APK-Inform’s latest forecast for the new crop stood at 5.3 million tonnes.
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If any of these forecasts are realized, it would be Ukraine’s lowest production volume since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The average for the last three years is 5.55 million tonnes.
Corn yield to recover
For corn, trade sources hope that recent rains have brought the needed moisture to the crop. They expect that the 2025/26 yield will either return to the five-year average of 6.78 tonnes per hectare. Or, even go up to 7 tonnes per ha, meaning that production would be close to 30 million tonnes.
APK’s new crop corn estimate stood at 29.2 million tonnes.
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“Last year, the late crops — corn, sunflowers, soybeans — were the ones that suffered from the drought. The early ones [barley, wheat and rapeseeds] are somewhere close to last year, and we expect the later ones to recover their yields,” a Ukraine-based analyst said.
If realized, the corn harvest forecast would be a 19% increase from 25.2 million tonnes, the latest available figure for the 2024/25 crop harvest. Ukraine has not yet released a final figure.
“Expectations are more positive for winter crops, with a slightly lower amount expected than last season. Autumn was dry, and March as well, but the situation has gotten better with the current rains; [they were] very timely. Still, it is too early to expect it will be above last year’s result… it was a bad start,” a second analyst told Fastmarkets.
Ukrainian farmers have already started spring sowing in March. Grain planting for wheat and barley was 62% and 79% completed respectively as of Thursday April 10.
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Given the estimated areas under spring crops and previously reported areas under winter planting, the total wheat area stands at 4.6 million ha, down by almost 7% year on year.
The planting area under barley is expected to be at 1.39 million ha, down by around 1% year on year.
Corn sowing has not yet started, but the official estimate is that the area will be at 4.02 million ha, up by 2% compared with 2024/25.
