The continuing decline in production of milk in rural households is not a surprise, but the slowdown in growth of milk production by agricultural enterprises is alarming. According to the performance results of the first half of the year, the agricultural enterprises did not go into negative figures, but if in the first five months the increase to the previous year was + 3.6%, then for the six months it was only +1.7%. That is, either the State Statistics cardinally «recalculated» the semi-annual figures, or milk production by this category has noticeably fallen: -4% to May and -4% to June of last year.

At the same time, it should be noted that the number of cows in agricultural enterprises practically did not decrease comparing to the previous year, it was only -0.2%. Then, it possibly means that the weather has strongly affected prrformance: pressure drops and frequent changes in temperature.

As a result, according to State Statistics, milk production in Ukraine in the first half of the year was 4.96 million tons, which is 1.8% YoY. Rural households produced 3.5 million tons (71% of the total volume of production), which is 3.2% less than in the first half of the previous year. During the same period agricultural producers added +1.4%, which is 1.4 million tons.

The livestock continues to decline (-3.5%), but the situation is different depending on the category of milk producer. In recent years the dynamics of decline in agricultural enterprises and households has been almost the same. Now, on July 1, agricultural producers «lost» only 0.2% of the livestock, while the number of livestock in households fell by 4.4%. The number of cows in Ukraine in mid-2018 amounted to 2,035.4 thousand.

infagro