Ukraine is predicted possible problems with the quality of buckwheat: what causes
30 October 2025 17:18
In 2025, Ukraine harvested buckwheat about 15 percent less than last year. According to Rodion Rybchynskyy, director of the Union of Mukomols of Ukraine, this does not create a deficit on the domestic market, but prices will rise due to the hype promoted by the media.
Rybchynskyy notes that the availability of buckwheat is primarily the responsibility of farmers, who choose what to sow. For them, the economy is simple: you can give the area to sunflower, soybean or rapeseed and continue to fight for export duty benefits, or sow buckwheat with a typical yield of 1.3 -1.5 tons per hectare and sell the grain of the new harvest about 20 thousand hryvnias per ton.
How the reduction of the buckwheat harvest will hit the prices for Ukrainians and whether they will get quality grain for their money, was analyzed by the
The situation on the buckwheat market: what the figures tell us
According to Rodion Rybchynskyy, there are no grounds for a market price hike. He explains the mechanics of the rise in the cost of the product as follows: the media write that “buckwheat is becoming more expensive”, consumers run to stores, buy 25 UAH/kg, expecting tomorrow 30 UAH/kg. Processors’ warehouses are empty, retailers ask “where is the buckwheat”, and it is on the hands of farmers who are waiting for 40 UAH/kg and temporarily do not release the goods, because the previous batches have already been bought up cheaply.
He reminds that such hype is repeated every 3 – 4 years and does not reflect the real consumption: Ukrainians do not eat buckwheat in the volumes that the media like to talk about. Buckwheat is critical primarily for people with diabetes, while others can easily replace it, because the country has enough corn and wheat groats.
Background statistics of the season: sown areas under buckwheat in 2025 reduced to 69.1 thousand hectares against 90.3 thousand hectares last year. As of October 24, 86% of the area was harvested with a yield of 14 tons per hectare; 83.3 thousand tons were harvested against 126.9 thousand tons a year earlier.
How the weaknesses of the harvesting campaign-2025 will affect the quality of buckwheat and the price for the end consumer,
Ukrainian buckwheat 2025: what factors have become determinants for the crop
Gromovoy explains: Ukrainian buckwheat is now entering the final phase of the season with mixed signals: the harvesting campaign is almost over, but some areas were not threshed due to rains in late September and October.
According to him, “in fact, buckwheat harvesting in Ukraine is over. But … not all areas have been harvested”. The key uncertainty of the season is the quality of grain, which was hit by precipitation and could be stored in a wet state.
The owners are now faced with the task of resolving this situation, as the quality of grain after getting wet in the rain is not fully understood. Whether there will be additional harvesting, today it is hard to say, – says the expert.
Thus, the wet autumn-2025 shifted part of the schedule and put farms in a dilemma: to finish harvesting problem fields or to fix the result and minimize losses.
According to the information, which was voiced by Sergey Gromovoy, in 2025 agrarians sowed 69 thousand hectares of buckwheat. The yield this year amounted to 1.4 tons per hectare.
The price is already rising: what pushes the cost of buckwheat upward
Over the past month and a half buckwheat has gone up in price. There are two reasons. First, retail chains are running out of cereal from last year’s crop. Secondly, producers have raised purchase prices for new grain.
Stocks of groats from the last harvest are running out…. Farmers have raised the price for new grain of this harvest. For scale: if last year the farmer’s price was 14 – 15 thousand UAH per ton, the new crop is 20 – 21 thousand UAH / ton. This corresponds to an approximate increase of ~40% at the level of raw materials, – says Gromovoy.
According to him, the average price of groats on the shelves of networks today is 37 – 38 UAH and tends to rise to 40 – 42 UAH. That is, the consumer price reacts inertially to changes in the purchase price.
Buckwheat quality as the main unknown in the price formula
Moisture during harvesting is a risk not only for volumes, but also for the nutritional quality and preservation of grain. Both processing and price scenarios for the coming weeks will depend on this.
Today we need to talk not so much about price as about quality. Because mostly all buckwheat was harvested during the wet season, and the quality is not clear to the end, what kind of buckwheat the owner has in his pantry. So the question is about quality. And this quality can affect the price too. Because if it is not very good quality, the owners will try to sell as quickly as possible. And en masse,” predicts the director of the International Buckwheat Association.
The opposite scenario – if a significant amount of grain will be of high quality.
If it was possible to collect dry grain, and quality, not damaged, and not bacteria, then the price may be a little faster to grow, – explains Sergei Gromovoy.
Thus, the distribution of supply-demand in the coming months will be determined not only by the shaft, but above all by the conditionality of grain.
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Realities on the buckwheat market in the fall: the ceiling of 50 UAH and the import factor
Despite the current upward dynamics, experts do not expect uncontrolled heating of prices.
If the domestic price exceeds UAH 50, imports of buckwheat from the Russian Federation will begin. What we call “Kazakh buckwheat” … In fact, it is Russian buckwheat. And in Russia prices are much cheaper, so it will balance the level of price rise, – says Gromovoy.
And adds:
Exceeding the mark of 50 UAH before the New Year is not predicted.
In practice, this means that external supply can work as a fuse for excessive price hikes if the domestic market goes into a warm-up. At the same time, import sensitivity depends on logistics, regulatory conditions and actual price differentials.
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