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Ukraine harvests over 30 mln tons of grain

"This means that we will fully meet demands of our domestic market, food security and price stability during the marketing year," Ukrainian Prime Minister said

KIEV, August 7 (Itar-Tass) - Ukraine has collected over 30 million tons of grain, Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov told a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “We have already threshed around 22 million tons of wheat, over 7 million tons of barley and 600,000 tons of rye,” he said.

This year Ukraine plans to harvest around 57 million tons of grain, up by 11 million tons year-on-year. “At least 75% of the output will be food grain,” Azarov said. “This means that we will fully meet demands of our domestic market, food security and price stability during the marketing year.”

He noted that Ukraine’s grain consumption is expected to reach 28.4 million tonn. “This means that around 28 million tons is our grain industry’s export potential. This is a very hard work to collect and keep such harvest safe.”

In 2012, Ukraine’s agricultural companies yielded around 46.2 million tons of grain, down by 18.6% year-on-year. In the 2012-2013 marketing year (from July 2012 to June 2013) Ukraine exported 23 million tons of grain.

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