Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Poltava farmers are happy with rain and plan to increase vegetable acreage
Recent rainfalls cheered much the agricultural producers of Poltava oblast. First, thanks to rain farmers will be able to harvest beet crops with less bruising. Besides, rains are likely to increase a bit the late cabbage varieties yield. However, the producers of winter wheat waited for rain most of all, as moisture can improve the plantings' condition.
Unfortunately, part of winter wheat plantings has not survived till rainfalls and died partially or fully. The other problem is that many producers have not sowed winter wheat at all realizing that it means waste of time and money in drought circumstances. As a rule, such farmers rely on barley that has been very profitable this year. At this moment the specialists of Poltava office, Agricultural Marketing Project (AMP) record the significant demand growth of barley seeds. We can expect the deficit on this crop seeds soon.
The agricultural producers of Ukraine have a chance to get in the same trouble one more time. When the prices on certain kind of agricultural commodity are growing, next year they extend the crop acreage significantly; soon, as always, the agricultural producers will complain on low prices as a result of overproduction. Still the highest profits are normally gained by those producers who specialize on certain crop production, working on production cost decrease and quality improvement. Also, according to the evaluations of the Agricultural Marketing Project, quality market information is of great use for the agricultural producers.
The other trend observed in Poltava oblast recently is the increased interest to vegetable production from the farmers' side, as vegetables bring stable profit on relatively moderate acreage. This year was rather unfavorable for some vegetables; nevertheless, high price and demand will encourage another extension of vegetable acreage with the great probability. It is the opinion of AMP specialists. But, unlike grain crops, vegetables require much higher level of maintenance, and many new producers have no idea of that. Still, regional offices of the Project will do their best to help farmers to have good harvest of vegetable crops.