February 23 2011, 16:36 Fruit-Inform

It is difficult for Ukrainian farmers to decide on planting areas for 2011

Most vegetable producers do not have accurate plans on planting areas under crops. This was shown by the survey conducted by Fruit-Inform Project in advance of the conference “Potato and Vegetables of Ukraine-2011”.

Farmers incline rather to remain everything unchanged as, according to them, there is quite high probability of overproduction. Those, who plan to expand, will count on cabbages, potatoes, and onions as these crops will be the most profitable in the outgoing season. Changes are most often planned within 5-10%. However, according to analysts from Fruit-Inform Project, even slight growth of areas may result in sharp increase of production as areas under borsch vegetables (onions, cabbages, beets, carrots) expanded also last year. And growing technologies keep on improving giving more and more potential to yields.

Nevertheless, in this season Ukraine will have quite a lot of farmers engaging in vegetable growing for the first time and hoping for solid profits. Analysts of Fruit-Inform Project often receive requests from possible beginners at the vegetable business, who, in view of high vegetable prices, plan to develop production. Their business-plans usually are based on the current season prices.

“Possible potato and vegetable seed shortage can be the only restrictive factor of too sharp increase of production in this season. However, as it was proved before, in such cases producers find seeds too, even if they are not of high quality”, Andriy Yarmak, head of Fruit-Inform Project, says. “Another positive factor is improvement of major potato and vegetable producers' professionalism as they begin to use high-quality market information and do not plan to increase production sharply in those years when probability of produce oversupply is rather high in the market. However, they account only for 10-40% of potato and vegetable production in Ukraine”, the analyst continues.

How will events in the vegetable market develop in the season 2011/12? This and many other questions will be discussed during the third international conference “Potato and Vegetables of Ukraine-2011”.

This event is to take place at Shuvar, the largest wholesale market of Ukraine, Lvov, Ukraine, February 24-25, 2011.