According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 2019 Ukraine takes the second place in the ranking of the world’s largest producers of pumpkin family products (which includes pumpkin and courgettes), second only to China, reports “ProAgro Group”, citing information from Ukrainian Club of Agrarian Business.
According to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, Ukrainian farms managed to produce about 650 thousand tons of pumpkins in 2020, which is 9% lower than the same figure of the previous year.
“The decrease in production volume was due to both the reduction of cultivated areas under this crop, as well as a decrease in yields. It should be noted that pumpkins are mainly grown in households. The industrial and private farms cultivate only 2% of pumpkins in Ukraine”, – says Svetlana Lytvyn, UCAB analyst.
The foreign trade in pumpkins is underdeveloped. Import shipments are practically absent, but export supplies, although they rose last year by 3.2 times to 2 thousand tons, do not exceed 0.3% of the total volume of pumpkins produced in Ukraine. The main importing countries of Ukrainian pumpkins are: UK (62% of export revenue), Romania (19%) and Moldova (4%).
This year Ukraine is expected to have a better pumpkin harvest than last year, primarily due to higher yields.
