Prolonged lack of rain threatens Ukraine’s crops, scientists say

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KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine is experiencing the lowest soil moisture levels of the last seven seasons, raising concerns about yields in 2025, the Ukrainian national agricultural academy was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

Ukraine, a global grain producer and exporter, traditionally grows winter crops whose yields are highly dependent on incoming moisture in autumn and winter.

“The total amount of precipitation for November-January was only 79.6 mm and was significantly inferior to the long-term average of 117 mm,” APK-Inform consultancy quoted the Academy

as saying.

“For the last 7 years such provision of winter crops with atmospheric moisture was observed for the first time,” it added.

Scientists said the insufficient amount of precipitation during most of the winter period and very low reserves of moisture in the soil “cause special concern for grain producers.”

Most parts of Ukraine remained rainless during and before autumn sowing and farmers threw seed into dry soil with the hope of winter snows.

Ukraine’s state weather forecasters said in October that most of Ukraine’s winter crop was under threat as almost all seedlings were underdeveloped.

Farmers sowed 5.24 million hectares of winter grain for the 2025 harvest and wheat dominates the area. Winter wheat accounts for about 95% of all Ukrainian wheat.

The first deputy agriculture minister Taras Vysotskiy said last year that Ukraine’s wheat harvest may increase to up to 25 million metric tons in 2025 from around 22 million tons in 2024 thanks to a larger sowing area and conditional on good weather.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)