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Ukraine aims to boost rapeseed crop
KIEV, April 2 (Reuters) — Ukraine aims to boost annual rapeseed production to at least 7 million tonnes in coming years from about 2.3 million in 2008, taking advantage of strong demand, a senior agriculture official said on Wednesday. «We can produce more than 7 million tonnes of rapeseed per year from about 3 million hectares,» Deputy Agriculture Minister Oleksander Shevchenko told an international biofuel conference in Kiev. «For that we should increase the yield to about 2.5 tonnes per ha». Ukraine increased its harvest to 1.05 million tonnes in 2007 from 605,700 in 2006 and an average harvest of 390,000 in 2002-2005. The yield was 1.31 tonnes per ha in 2007, compared with 1.57 tonnes per ha in 2006. Analysts forecast the rapeseed crop could reach more than 2 million tonnes this year after farms boosted the sowing area to 1.83 million ha from 1.15 million in 2007. But Shevchenko said Ukraine, short of oil deposits, would not likely process rapeseed into biofuel as the biodiesel net cost was 40-50 percent higher than gas oil retail prices. Instead, Ukraine exports the rapeseed and local vegetable oil producers have said that during the current market conditions Ukraine will remain a raw supplier to European biofuel plants. «There should be strong support from the state,» he said. Shevchenko said several dozen small Ukrainian biodiesel plants have only ever produced a total of 20,000 tonnes of fuel. In 2007, production was almost suspended due to record high rapeseed prices. Ukraine consumes about 5 million tonnes of gas oil per year. Rapeseed exports almost doubled to 864,362 tonnes in the first eight months of the 2007/08 season compared with 486,582 tonnes for the whole 2006/07 season. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; editing by Chris Johnson)
Date: 01.04.2008 Comments:Leave your comment
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You raelly found a way to make this whole process easier., 29.08.2011 01:18:28