Sunflower is considered a stably profitable crop in the Kherson region. This year, landowners are planning to increase the area under this crop to 350 thousand hectares.

In 2018, this year its sown area will be 350 thousand ha. Irrigated areas of culture, even despite the rise in price of water, will also increase from 27 to 46 thousand ha. Farmers predict that there will be no problems with the sale of seeds.

Not only high profitability, but also noticeable climate changes play in favor of sunflower. In the Kherson region almost every year there is an autumn drought. Because of this, farmers do not want to take risks and reduce the sown area of ​​winter crops in favor of spring crops, according to Andrei Nedelko, deputy director of the Department of Agro-Industrial Development of the Regional State Administration.

A tendency to increase the area under sunflower has been observed for several decades. If in 1995 this crop occupied 141.9 thousand hectares, now sown area has increased by another 200 thousand hectares, according to data from the main statistics department of the Kherson region.

Due to the use of more productive varieties and irrigation, the average yield of sunflower increased from 8.4 to 16.2 c / ha. In addition, in the fields of the Kherson region they began to grow another drought-tolerant crop - safflower, whose oil has many useful properties.