Ukraine's buckwheat supply tops 275,000 tonnes, yet retail prices keep climbing

Ukraine will have enough buckwheat to cover domestic consumption this season, officials and industry experts agree, yet retail prices for the groat continued to climb through September. The Ministry of Agrarian Policy puts this year's buckwheat supply at 275,000 tonnes against domestic demand of no more than 220,000 tonnes, a balance it says leaves no room for either a shortage or further price increases, according to ipress.ua. The ministry made the same point about sugar.

Retail shelves point the other way. In the Novus, Silpo and ATB chains, a kilogram of buckwheat groats gained between 10 and 23 hryvnias over the past month, according to UNIAN reporting cited by socportal.info and Kontrakty.UA, and some product lines have more than doubled in price over the past year.

Supply covers demand on paper

Agricultural business analyst Andriy Kytaiev told ipress.ua that Ukraine has managed to even out buckwheat production and consumption this year, that supply on the market is sufficient and that there are no objective grounds for the current increase. Serhiy Hromovyi, executive director of the International Buckwheat Association, takes a similar view on volumes: in comments to UNIAN reported by agropolit.com, he said new-crop deliveries are already arriving and will be enough to supply the domestic market until winter, so no shortage is expected.

Hromovyi attributes the September move to the end of the old-crop season, thin carryover stocks, panic buying and logistics. "This is ordinary hype linked to the unstable situation in the country, not the general market situation," he told UNIAN in comments published by Kontrakty.UA. "It is the end of the season, plus panic sentiment in society — that is why prices are rising. Plus logistics problems. Warehouses have been destroyed in some places, hence the supply interruptions." Buckwheat, he noted, is the first grain Ukrainians buy for household reserves and it stores well.

The price path since a record-low harvest

The structural driver appeared earlier: last year Ukraine harvested its smallest buckwheat crop in the years since independence, according to Hromovyi. The sequence he described runs as follows:

• around 35 hryvnias per kilogram a year ago;
• 60 to 70 hryvnias per kilogram by the start of summer, with some varieties at about 80 hryvnias;
• a further 10 to 23 hryvnias per kilogram in September in Novus, Silpo and ATB;
• more than a doubling in price for individual product lines over 12 months.

Pasta, one of the main substitutes for buckwheat in Ukrainian diets, has risen far less over the same year, agropolit.com reports. Flour, by contrast, keeps getting more expensive as constrained grain export capacity leaves large volumes on the domestic market.

Why the new crop will not reset prices

Harvesting ran through late August and September, but the arrivals did not translate into a visible increase in supply: sown area stayed roughly at last year's level, and the crop itself is small. "There is enough supply on the market to cover Ukrainians' needs, but increasing it enough for prices to fall significantly is not yet working out," Hromovyi said in comments published by socportal.info. UkrAgroConsult likewise reported that the new crop is unlikely to bring a substantial reduction in Ukrainian prices.

Farmer behaviour is the other reason. Hromovyi expects growers to hold buckwheat back rather than push large volumes onto the market, because this season many crops will deliver minimum profitability or losses: prices for maize, wheat, soybeans and sunflower have already slipped or will slip significantly given the absence of exports in many positions, and buckwheat is the crop farmers will try to use to cover those losses. Sharply higher diesel costs add to the pressure. agropolit.com has reported that buckwheat will not be in short supply but prices could still rise by 15%.

Household budgets have moved as well: average wages in Ukraine rose 23.1% year on year in August 2026 to almost 31,900 hryvnias, though they edged down from July, Kontrakty.UA reported.