Ukraine’s 2025 grain harvest is likely to fall to 51-52 million metric tons from about 55 million tons in 2024, mostly owing to poor weather, the deputy head of Ukraine’s largest farm union said on Thursday.

UAC’s Denys Marchuk said the harvest could include 21 million tons of wheat against 22 million tons harvested in 2024.

A drought in the south and east was the key reason for the decline, he said, adding that swarms of locusts in southern regions were unlikely to have significant impact on the harvest.
Officials and producers say that the locusts are threatening sunflower and other crops in Ukraine’s southern regions, largely because the Russian war in Ukraine has made it impossible to use traditional pest control methods.

Farmers in the Zaporizhzhia region say the insects have destroyed up to a third of their sunflower crops.

“Currently, six regions remain seriously affected by these insects. Yes, they cause damage, but this will mainly harm the economy of each individual farm rather than affecting the overall harvest,” Marchuk said on national television.

Officials have not yet said how many hectares of crops have been damaged by locusts.

UAC said this week that torrential rains across western, northern and central Ukrainian regions have slowed the harvest significantly, causing a drop in export rates and a potential slide in rapeseed output this year.

Marchuk said that a smaller harvest could cut Ukrainian grain exports in the new 2025/26 July-June season to between 38 million and 39 million tons from 40.6 million tons in 2024/25.

The Ukrainian economy ministry said farmers had threshed 10.3 million tons of grain as of July 24, including 7 million tons of wheat.
Source: Reuters