This was reported by the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture, which put this product on the eighth place among all agricultural export goods of Ukraine. A year earlier, rapeseed oil ranked at the beginning of the seventh ten in the rating of Ukrainian exports.
It is noted that this was the result of the development of processing and economic policy aimed at increasing added value in the agricultural sector. In Ukraine, against the background of the introduction in September 2025 of a 10% export duty on soybean and rapeseed, the production of oil and meal from these raw materials, as well as the export of processed products, has increased sharply.
In total, in January-February 2026, Ukraine exported 9.95 million tons of agricultural products worth $4 billion. Compared to the same period of 2025, physical export volumes remained almost unchanged, while foreign exchange earnings increased by 9.3%.
The EU is the main recipient of Ukraine’s agro-food exports
According to the report, the key trade partner for Ukrainian agrarian products remains the countries of the European Union. In January-February 2026, they accounted for about 50 percent of foreign currency earnings from agrarian exports.
Corn, sunflower oil, wheat, soybeans and meat traditionally remained the largest export commodities. In the first two months of 2026, corn exports grew by 20%, from 4.7 million tons to 5.6 million tons. And the main driver was a significant increase in shipments to Turkey, from 530,000 tons to 1.6 million tons.
“At the same time, wheat exports fell by 43%, from 2.1 million tons to 1.2 million tons. Shipments to EU countries decreased the most, from 850,000 tons to 88,000 tons,” the country’s economy ministry said. – One of the reasons was the record wheat production in the European Union in 2025, which reached 134.4 million tons – one of the highest figures in the history of observations”.
European farmers are on the claim
As reported, the Spanish agricultural association ASAJA and the European association of farmers’ organizations Copa-Cogeca appealed to the European Commission with a complaint against Ukraine’s imposition of a 10% duty on exports of sunflower, rapeseed and soybean seeds. They claim that this has led to unfair competition on the European oil market.
According to the associations, Ukraine has introduced an “exit” tax on seeds to keep raw materials inside the country, where the domestic industry can buy them at artificially low prices, far below the market value. As a result, Ukraine exports the finished product to the EU at record low prices that European producers cannot compete with.
At the same time, imports of Ukrainian oil to the EU have grown from 2 million to more than 3 million tons, which currently accounts for 41% of all vegetable oil entering the EU, the associations said.
