Wheat Harvest and Area Both Down 30%: Ukraine’s Three Big Crops, by the Numbers

The crops harvested in the greatest quantity on Ukraine’s farmland are maize, wheat and sunflower seed. According to FAOSTAT, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) statistical database, production in 2021 was 42.11 million tonnes of maize, 32.18 million tonnes of wheat, and 16.39 million tonnes of sunflower seed. By 2024 these had fallen to 26.86 million tonnes, 22.44 million tonnes and 10.96 million tonnes respectively.

All three fell by more than 30% between 2021 and 2024. But the shape of the decline differs by crop. This article looks first at where the figures come from, and at how the statistical coverage changed in 2022.

Where the Numbers Come From

Ukraine’s official body for compiling crop production figures is the State Statistics Service (Derzhstat). FAOSTAT is a database that gathers each country’s official statistics, and every value used in this article for Ukraine from 2019 to 2024 is marked with the symbol for an “Official figure.” For sunflower seed production in 2021 and 2022, the State Statistics Service’s own published annual tables (16.392 million and 11.329 million tonnes) match the FAOSTAT figures to the nearest thousand tonnes.

As of September 2026, FAOSTAT’s data goes up to 2024. Confirmed figures for the 2025 harvest are not covered in this article.

Production, 2021 to 2024

2021 was the year in which the State Statistics Service’s annual table put the combined total of cereals and pulses at 86.01 million tonnes. The following year, 2022 — the first harvest year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022 — that combined total fell to 53.86 million tonnes.

Compared with 2021, the fall in 2022 was 35.6% for wheat, 37.8% for maize, and 30.9% for sunflower seed (calculated for this article). All three recovered somewhat in 2023, but by 2024 all except wheat had fallen again.

The Area Being Counted Changed from 2022

There is an essential caveat when reading this table. The State Statistics Service’s annual table carries a note for each year. The 2021 figures exclude “the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, and part of the temporarily occupied territory of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.” The 2022 figures are noted as also excluding “territory temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation and part of the area where fighting has taken (or is taking) place.”

In other words, the decline in 2022 combines both fields that were devastated or became impossible to farm, and areas that simply fell outside the scope of the statistics. The table’s figures alone cannot separate the two.

The same table carries one more note for 2022: the figure was compiled from actual reports submitted by enterprises (an 82% submission rate) together with estimates, and may be revised later.

Harvested Area, and Yield per Hectare

For wheat, production fell 30.3% and harvested area fell 31.2% between 2021 and 2024. Yield per hectare barely changed, from 4.53 tonnes in 2021 to 4.60 tonnes in 2024. Numerically, wheat’s decline is explained less by a drop in per-field output than by a shrinking of the area actually harvested.

Maize and sunflower seed are a different story. Yield per hectare in 2023 returned to roughly 2021 levels, but in 2024 both fell again (maize to 6.60 tonnes, sunflower seed to 2.18 tonnes). In 2024, a decline in yield compounded the decline in area to push production down further. What caused the drop in yield in 2024 cannot be determined from these statistics.

Production and Export Volumes Are Different Numbers

Production is the amount harvested from the fields in a given year. It is not the amount sold abroad. Ukraine’s grain exports are counted over a “marketing year” running from July to the following June, and are reported by different bodies. Port access and export routes are covered in Where Ukraine’s Grain Leaves From, the Summer Odesa’s Port Was Shut Down by Attacks.

How large a share agriculture holds within Ukraine’s economy overall is covered in Ukraine’s Industries Under Wartime Conditions, and its black soil and climate in Ukraine’s Rivers Flow Toward Three Seas.

When following the numbers for these three crops, it helps to check, alongside each figure, from which year the statistical coverage changed, whether it is production or export volume, and whether it is a confirmed value or a preliminary one — doing so makes the figures much less likely to be misread.