576,000 tonnes of rapeseed oil — this is Ukraine's projected export in the 2025/26 marketing year, according to UKAB. That is 2.7 times more than in the previous season. The problem is that this increase is not driven by market efficiency but by a direct shifting of costs from processors onto raw-material producers.
How the duty changed the market
Since August 2024 the Verkhovna Rada introduced a 10% export duty on rapeseed and soy. The logic of the initiators: force farmers to sell raw materials domestically, load domestic oil-processing plants, and increase foreign-currency revenue from processed products. The result is statistically impressive: domestic processing of rapeseed in 2025/26 MY is estimated at 1.5 million tonnes, 2.6 times higher than the previous season, and foreign-currency receipts from rapeseed oil for July–December 2025 rose 2.7 times, reports Ukroliya Prom.
But there is another side to the balance. After the law was passed, the domestic market reacted instantly — rapeseed prices fell. Processors received raw materials cheaper than world quotations and made full use of this.
“The export duty is effectively a redistribution of income among producers in favor of processors. Instead of stimulating processing, we received a mechanism to cover the losses of the processing sector at the expense of crop farming.”
American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine (ACC)
Who paid for the “record”
According to the ACC, the total losses of Ukrainian farmers from the duty on rapeseed and soy reached $200 million. In particular, due to a 7% decline in domestic prices relative to world prices, farmers lost $130 million, and another $50 million was taken as duty to the state budget. The hardest hit were small and medium producers — those who physically cannot organize direct exports themselves and therefore are forced to sell on the domestic market at any price.
A separate problem was the chaos during implementation: after the president signed the law in September 2025, producers exempted from the duty by law effectively could not use the benefit. As Food Ingredient First reports, customs annulled all declarations — including those where the duty was not supposed to apply — due to the absence of a mechanism to confirm own production. Processors took advantage of the pause and pushed purchase prices down even further.
Less rapeseed, more oil — the harvest paradox
At the same time, the rapeseed harvest in 2025/26 MY declined to 3.2 million tonnes — 10% less than a year earlier. Area under the crop fell to 1.3 million ha. The reason is obvious: if a farmer receives less for raw materials than the market price, they sow less. If this trend continues, processing plants may face a shortage of the very raw material for which they expanded capacity already next season.
- Rapeseed oil production in 2025/26 MY — 582,000 tonnes (×2.6 compared to the previous season)
- Area under rapeseed — 1.3 million ha (–2% year on year)
- Rapeseed harvest — 3.2 million tonnes (–10%)
- Farmers’ losses from the duty on rapeseed and soy — up to $200 million, according to the ACC
- Duty to the state budget — UAH 6.2 billion from rapeseed alone (estimate cited in open calculations)
ACC analysts note that the argument about the successful experience of sunflower duties is not correct — sunflower, as a lighter crop, is more profitable for local processing, whereas rapeseed and soy are heavier and traditionally transported directly to consumers on large vessels.
If the reduction in rapeseed sowing areas continues into the 2026/27 MY, the record processing capacities that are currently loaded thanks to the duty will find themselves without sufficient raw material — and then the question “who actually won” will get a different answer.
