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A senior Ukrainian agriculture ministry official has warned that Ukraine's corn exports could fall by nearly a quarter in the 2021/2022 season due to the Russian invasion, with sunflower oil exports set to decline even more sharply.
Deputy Agriculture Minister Roman Rosakov said at a conference held in Prague on Wednesday that corn exports could fall by 24% to 17 million tonnes in the current marketing year, which ends in June.
Rosakov added that sunflower oil exports could drop by a third to 3.4 million tonnes.
Ukraine is the world's largest producer and exporter of sunflower oil. Before the war broke out, Ukrainian producers were estimated to have exported around 6.6 million tonnes in the 2021/2022 season.
Ukrainian agricultural consultancy APK-Inform said last Saturday that export prices for Ukrainian corn have fallen amid weak demand and large stockpiles, which since the start of the Russian occupation can only be exported by rail via the Polish border.
Corn for delivery in April and May is currently priced at between $240 and $250 a tonne at the Polish border, down $15 a tonne from the previous week, according to APK-Inform.
Ukraine is one of the world's leading grain suppliers, having relied on Black Sea ports to export most of its raw agricultural produce. With that region now a war zone, traders are seeking to move as much grain as possible by rail instead.
Ukrainian officials said corn stocks stood at around 13 million tonnes at the end of March, noting that only 300,000 tonnes of corn were exported last month.
Taras Vysotsky, another deputy Ukrainian agriculture minister, said at the same Prague conference that Ukraine could still manage to export 2 million tonnes of wheat before the end of the season, though he did not give an overall export estimate for the season comparable to last year's figures.