KYIV, Sept 26 – Ukrainian farms have harvested 677,000 hectares of sunflower seed so far this season, threshing a total of 880,000 tons of sunseed, the government press service said on Tuesday.
The press service said sunseed yields averaged a record high 1.30 tons per hectare, compared with last year’s 1.04 tons per hectare. The area sown to sunflower totals 2.888 million hectares this year, compared with 2.860 million in 1999.
Government spokeswoman Natalia Zarudna told reporters at the weekend that Ukraine’s sunseed crop was likely to jump to a record 3.2 million tons from 2.75 million harvested in 1999.
Analysts say, however, that the government forecast is too optimistic and Ukraine is likely to harvest no more than some three million tons of sunseed this year.
