KYIV, Aug 5 (Reuters) - A record heatwave in July across most Ukrainian regions may reduce the 2024 corn harvest by about 6 million metric tons from last year's level, Ukrainian producers' group the Ukrainian Agrarian Council (UAC) has warned.
It gave no forecast for the resultant harvest total but its prediction is in line with a forecast last week from the Ukrainian grain traders union UGA, which foresaw a 2024 corn harvest of 23.4 million tons compared with 29.6 million in 2023.
Denys Marchuk, deputy head of the UAC, said over the weekend that the corn yield in many regions may fall by about 30% due to the poor weather, although the government is less pessimistic. The acting farm minister said last month the late crop yield might drop up to 15% in most regions.
Separately, analyst group APK-Inform said on Monday that temperatures decreased slightly in the last days of July, but overall conditions remained unfavourable.
"The agrometeorological conditions slightly softened, but remained at the level of unfavourable for the formation of yield of late crops," the consultancy quoted Ukrainian state weather forecasters as saying.
Forecasters said that the prolonged period of high air and soil temperatures combined with a lack of precipitation led to the intensification and spread of drought conditions, which negatively affected the growth and development of late crops.
"In southern, central and eastern regions, corn, sunflower, buckwheat and soybean showed premature drying of lower-tier leaves and twisting of upper-tier leaves, in some places complete drying and sometimes death of plants," they said. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and David Holmes)
