Rye harvest will not cover the needs of Ukrainian bakers

This year’s rye harvest will not cover the needs of domestic bakery production. This opinion was expressed by the president of the All-Ukrainian Association of Bakers Oleksandr Taranenko in a comment to Ukrinform.

“This year’s rye harvest is significantly smaller than the volume of domestic consumption. Already at the beginning of next year, the rye that we harvested will simply run out. After that, producers will have to purchase rye flour or rye grain abroad – in particular, in the Baltic countries or Poland. We have already encountered a similar situation this year in the spring. Some bakers did not have stocks and were forced to buy imported flour, but this year it will happen even faster, since, unlike last year, this season there are almost no transitional residues, and the harvest has decreased,” explains the president of the association.

He assures that the shortage of rye flour among producers will not create a shortage of products on the shelves, but will affect the price – primarily due to the higher price of imports and complex logistics. Last spring, Ukrainian producers paid about UAH 20,000 for a ton of imported rye flour, while domestic flour cost about UAH 8,000 at the beginning of the season. However, producers are not reducing the volume of rye bread, even despite the increase in cost. The reason is simple – they work not “from the harvest”, but under specific orders from retail chains.

“Paradoxically, it is not the bakers who decide how much and what kind of bread to bake. After all, we bake bread according to trade orders. If people like wheat bread, then trade will need it, and therefore we will have more orders to bake it. And if people like rye, then we will bake more of it,” the expert says.

Tags: Ukraine, Bread, rye