OREANDA-NEWS. July 22, 2010. Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Viktor Slauta has held a telephone conference on the grain market performance in the 2010-2011 marketing year and state of harvesting. The agenda of the meeting includes the most important for ensuring food security issues: progress in harvesting crops, the situation in the main food markets in the current year and readiness of the industry to autumn field works.

At the beginning of the meeting the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine informed all in attendance in the central and regional studios of communication system that, pursuant to instructions of the President of Ukraine in the framework of the Committee on Economic Reforms, headed by Viktor Yanukovych, the working group "Development of agriculture and land reform" is functioning. It will solve strategic issues for further development of agriculture and land reform.

"In general, early grain and grain legumes harvesting is organized, and we can expect a good crop. Provided the optimal structure of crops, especially grain and industrial crops", said the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine in his speech.

However, according to the Head of the agricultural unit of the Government, some regions face the real battle for the harvest. This is particularly Crimea, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, which under normal conditions must have completed harvest, but the weather got in the road.

"I want to emphasize that the Government understands the situation and is ready to support in every way especially problematic regions. The task of our meeting - once again to assess our potential and, if necessary, to make some allowances to our actions in order to avoid significant losses during harvesting period and define our positions towards actions of the state concerning stability of the internal market and prevent loss of grain producers", said Victor Slauta.

However, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine has stressed that it is rather difficult situation in the world corn market, as for four straight years its production and reserves have significantly been increasing. According to Derzhkontrolsilhospprod, as of today in Ukraine grain stock is about 5 million tons, including wheat - over 2.5 million tons.

At the same time Viktor Slauta has noted that in the world leading grain exchanges futures prices of grain, especially wheat and maize are growing.

"So today we need to take urgent measures to prevent the collapse of prices at the domestic grain market this year, form sufficient amount of state and regional grain stocks, lay the proper financial basis for the harvesting and winter crops sowing in order to reliably ensure food security of the state in the current and next years", said the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine.