OREANDA-NEWS.  July 11, 2012. Agricultural enterprises have harvested 26% of the area of the planned 10.3 million ha of early grains, or 2.67 million hectares. Now there is a collection of wheat, barley, rye, canola, peas. Gross harvest now is 4.978 million tones are already at an average yield of 18.7 centner/ha. This was announced by director of Department of plant growing of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food Oleksandr Demidov.

He also said that due to drought in some southern and eastern regions there is difficult situation with the early grain - wheat and barley.

In turn, Director of the Department said that now the central regions of the country are involved in harvesting campaign: Kyiv, Khmelnytsky, Cherkasy, Cherkasy region, where the main volume of wheat, where rainfall was enough. Therefore, here the average yield of wheat and barley is at the level of average performance - more than 30 centner/ha.

He added that in such hot weather crops of wheat and barley are less affected by pests and diseases, so nearly 70% of the crop, which is now submitted to the elevators, is a food grain.

In total, according to the forecast of the Ministry, early grain harvest is expected to reach 20-21 million tons. It should be recalled that Ukraine consumes an average of food grains about 6 million tons and in the presence we have 6.5 million tons of grain of last year's harvest in elevators.