Ukraine eats almost all the potatoes it grows, there is no way to export them, — Samoilichenko
12 November 20:30
EXCLUSIVE
Ukraine practically does not export potatoes. Almost all of the harvest remains inside the country or spoils due to lack of proper storage conditions. Olga Samoilichenko, executive director of the Ukrainian Association of Potato Producers, said this in an interview with the "Komersant Ukrainian" YouTube channel.
We hardly export potatoes. We eat almost all the potatoes and process them into chips and starch. If we haven’t consumed all of it and haven’t sold it for starch, we throw it away. Because there is a catastrophic shortage of potato storage facilities in Ukraine,” Samoilichenko said.
She clarified that isolated potato deliveries are made only to certain countries, including Moldova, but their volumes are so small that they do not affect the market.
The expert said that there are no official and verified statistics on potato production in Ukraine. Previously, the State Statistics Service reported 21 million tons of annual production, but, according to Samoilichenko, these figures are overstated.
“Until May 2025, the State Statistics Service said that we were producing 21 million tons of potatoes. This statistic was very overstated. The Ukrainian Association of Potato Producers raised this issue at working groups at the ministry, and we discussed it with the State Statistics Service. And this figure was corrected, but in a peculiar way,” she explained.
Thus, Ukrainian potatoes today are a product of domestic consumption, and the main problem for the industry is the lack of proper storage conditions for storing the product.
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