PARIS: Ukraine’s grain maize (corn) harvest is expected to fall 24 percent below last year and 5 percent below the five-year average to 32 million tons, the EU’s crop monitoring unit MARS said on Monday in updated estimates for the war-torn country. For sunflower, of which Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters, the harvest is expected to drop 15 percent from a year ago to 13.9 million tons, 2 percent below the five-year average. “Russia’s war against Ukraine has seen a decrease in the area under grain maize and sunflowers. Consequently, our production forecasts for both crops is below the 5-year average, despite fair yield outlooks,” it said in a report. Some 4 percent of the grain maize, 10 percent of the sunflowers, and 7 percent of soybean production is in areas currently subject to hostilities, MARS said. For winter crops, for which the harvest is over, the share is at 22 percent of total soft wheat production, 20 percent for barley and 13 percent for rapeseed. Analysts have been wrestling with how much grain Ukraine, usually one of the world’s biggest suppliers, will be able to harvest and export this year as war with Russia continues. MARS’ estimates are based its own yield estimates and on area data from the Ukrainian Farm Ministry, apart from those in the war zones of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, which are based on remote sensing, it said.