As reported by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine on February 27, the southern regions of Ukraine plan to start planting early spring grain crops in the coming days, depending on weather conditions. In general, the country will plant spring crops throughout the region on an area of 7.2 million hectares, including early grains - on 2.4 million hectares of land. According to preliminary data, the area under crop in 2017 will be about 26.8 million hectares (which corresponds to the indicator of 2016). In particular, grain sown areas will be 14.4 million hectares (54% of the total area). Such figures correspond to the optimal level in the structure of crop rotation.
It should be noted that wheat will cover the largest share in the structure of sown areas of crops - 23.6%, sunflower seeds - 20%, corn for grain - 16.4%, barley - 9.7%, and soybeans - 7, 2%.
Depending on the conditions after the wintering of the crops, the structure of the grain areas for the 2017 harvest will face some changes to optimize the areas of spring grain, in particular, corn and some later crops, the Ministry added. 
