Ukraine's Ministry of Agriculture said that as of April 13th, farmers in southern Ukraine had started planting sunflower seeds and had planted 91 thousand hectares of sunflower seeds.
       Ukraine plans to grow 5 million 580 thousand hectares of sunflower seeds this year, but analysts say that the area is likely to be bigger.

The spring of this year is very late, which has caused serious delay in sowing and the sowing time is very short. It may also cause corn and barley sown area to reduce, and farmers may be willing to grow more sunflower seeds, to make up for the loss of the cultivated land.