CURRENT STATE OF POTATO PRODUCTION AND MARKET CONDITIONS IN UKRAINE

The article explores the current state and conditions for forming the potato market in today's environment to improve the mechanism of its functioning. The purpose of the article is to analyze the domestic potato market, its current conditions, and price situation, as well as to develop recommendations for ensuring the effectiveness of its functioning. In the article, methods of analysis and synthesis, and analytical generalizations are used to analyze the potato market conditions. To illustrate the obtained research results, tabular and graphical representations are used. Analytical publications on the Internet were studied to characterize market trends. An analysis of the main indicators of potato production by categories of farms in Ukraine was conducted. The main regions with the highest gross production and highest potato yields in our country were identified. The dynamics of average prices for selling potatoes by agricultural enterprises and households in Ukraine and the peculiarities of their seasonal fluctuations were analyzed. The key components of internal demand in the potato market are expenditures on livestock and poultry feed and the consumption fund of the country's population. It was found that Ukraine is one of the largest potato producers in the world, but it does not hold leading positions in the international export market. The main reasons hindering our country from taking a key position in the world market have been identified. Ways to address systemic problems that will contribute to the development and efficient functioning of the potato industry in Ukraine have been proposed. The article concludes that the main components of creating a competitive agricultural product in Ukrainian potato farming should be to raise the quality of potatoes to the level of world standards by fundamentally changing the system of its harvesting, storage, and processing.