Ukraine wants to increase its area under maize by 700,000 hectares in 2012, targeting a total area of 4.3 million hectares, Farm Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk said on Wednesday.
"We will be recommending increasing the area under maize by 700,000 hectares.This will be compensation for the loss of winter grain," he told journalists.
According to Ukraine's State Statistics Service, farms harvested 3.5 million hectares of maize in 2011 and threshed a record 22.8 million tonnes.
Prysyazhnyuk said that 2.3 million hectares of Ukrainian winter grain crops, or 33.5 percent of the sprouted area of 7.0 million hectares, were in poor condition as of mid-January due to a severe drought that hit the country during sowing.
He said winter wheat dominated the damaged area.
"The condition of winter grains remains critical.
The drought prevented us getting good shoots while over an area of 1.4 million hectares we have no shoots at all," Prysyazhnyuk said.
"We will be forced to re-seed about 2 million hectares this spring".
Prysyazhnyuk said farmers would also be encouraged to enlarge the area under barley, soybean, peas and other cereals.
The ministry last month said the area sown for spring barley in 2012 could rise by 260,000 hectares to 2.85 million and other cereals by 141,000 hectares to 951,000.
He told Reuters last week that the 2012 grain harvest could fall to 44-46 million tonnes because of a sharp decrease in wheat production to about 12 million tonnes from 22.3 million in 2010.
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