OREANDA-NEWS. On August 26, 2008 The Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry has increased this year's harvest forecast for grain and leguminous crops by 5.7 million tons, to 48.7 million tons.

In this connection, Agriculture Minister Yuriy Melnyk changed the volume of expected grain exports to 22.6 million tons of newly harvested grain.

Ukrainian farms threshed 43 million tons of grain by August 22.

A total of 15.6 million hectares were sown with grain crops, including 7.6 million hectares with spring crops and 8 million hectares with winter crops.