Winter harvest: why not all corn has been harvested in Ukrainian fields yet
18 February 16:55
The harvest is not what is in the field, but what is in the barn. We have reason to mention this because of delays in harvesting corn, much of which still remains in the field. Komersant investigated why this happened.
Of the more than 30 million tons of corn forecast in Ukraine, about 29 million have already been harvested. This means that approximately 5-7% of the area has not yet been harvested. This data was shared a few days ago in an interview with Business Censor by Taras Vysotsky, Deputy Minister of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture.
“The delay may affect the marketability and quality of the grain. But there is no reason to say that the entire remaining volume will be lost. We are talking about a possible decrease in quality, not an automatic loss of harvest,” the official stressed.
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The Ministry of Economy hopes that the harvest will most likely be completed in March. But the farmers themselves are in no hurry to talk about specific dates. Moreover, harvesting in winter has its own peculiarities — there is a lot of snow in the fields, which greatly complicates the work of machinery. Oleksandr Chubuk, head of the Kyiv Region Farmers’ Association and manager of the Chaika-2 peasant farm in the village of Zgurivka, continues.
“There are farms in the Kyiv region that have not yet harvested all their corn. They are threshing it now. They will probably continue harvesting in March, and some even in April. And April is even better, because the corn will be dry and ready. And there will be no need to spend money on drying. In general, there are not many unharvested areas in our region. In Chernihiv region, for example, I saw that there are more of them. When you drive along the highway there, you can see that the fields are one after another. And here, in the Kyiv region, there are just a few patches here and there,” says the farmer.
As for the quality of grain that had to overwinter in the field, it varies, of course, in different regions and farms. Farmer Oleksandr Chubuk, for example, believes that the quality of corn left in the fields is more or less normal.
“The moisture content is the same as it was in the fall, around 24-25 percent. Mice did not particularly touch the corn. There are no signs of fungal diseases or rot yet,” said the farmer.
Interestingly, some farmers attribute the corn’s resilience to this year’s severe frosts, which simply “preserved” such processes.
For Ukraine, the current situation with the delayed corn harvest is not unprecedented. This has happened before. And more than once.
Oleksandr Buyukli, executive director of the First Ukrainian Agricultural Cooperative, recalls that a similar problem occurred in 2022. Even before the full-scale war, corn had to be harvested between January and March once every 3-5 years. According to the expert, a lot depends on the weather, which is difficult to predict. And this time, the main reason for the delay is the weather. Oleksandr Buyukli explains.
“During the sowing period, the weather conditions were quite difficult: spring turned into winter, then summer came, and a few days later it was winter again. Some farmers were unable to sow. Others sowed, but the seeds did not germinate due to the cold. A significant portion of the fields were two to three weeks behind in development. This is the first reason why the harvest was delayed. The grain ripening phase did not begin until the second half of October, and usually corn can be harvested as early as September. As a rule, in the fall, combines harvest sunflowers and soybeans, and then switch to corn. And then heavy rainfall began. Since sunflowers and soybeans are very sensitive to precipitation, harvesting equipment was used specifically for these crops. This prolonged their harvesting and led to an even greater delay in corn harvesting,” the expert explained.
Fortunately, the weather did not have a critical impact on the overall result. The 29 million tons of corn already harvested significantly exceed the previous harvest of 26.8 million tons. The total grain harvest in Ukraine in 2025 was approximately 60 million tons, and corn alone accounted for half of this result.
Author: Serhiy Vasilevich
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