Ukrainian farmers have almost completed their winter crop sowing, seeding about 5.96 million hectares as of Nov. 28, the country's agriculture ministry said on Tuesday.

The area included 4.16 million hectares of winter wheat, the ministry said in a statement, adding it still expects the sowing area to reach 4.36 million hectares.

Ukraine's winter wheat typically accounts for at least 95% of the country's overall wheat output.

The ministry said farmers had also sown 559,000 hectares of winter barley and 1.16 million hectares of winter rapeseed. It said producers planned to sow 692,100 hectares of winter barley and 1.2 million hectares of winter rapeseed this year.

Ukraine's first deputy minister Taras Vysotskiy said this month farmers had almost completed sowing and could harvest up to 20 million metric tons of winter wheat from the sown area.

For Ukraine's 2023 harvest, farmers sowed 4.46 million hectares of winter wheat, 612,200 hectares of winter barley and 1.376 million hectares of winter rapeseed .

If the figures do not change significantly, Ukraine will have reduced the area under winter wheat by around 7% and winter rapeseed by 12.8%.

Ukraine is expected to harvest 79 million tons of grain and oilseed in 2023, with a 2023/24 exportable surplus of about 50 million tons, the ministry has said. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Alexander Smith)