Foreign Agricultural Markets: State and Challenges in Sustainable Development

The article presents the main results of the study of the volume and structure of foreign trade of Ukraine and its place in international trade operations, outlines the main tendencies of export and import transactions in agricultural products and commodities. Quantitative and price indices of trading conditions have been analyzed in order to diagnose the place and importance of Ukraine in foreign agricultural markets and to outline ways to optimize the structure of foreign trade operations. Indices of terms of trade «price» and «quantitative» characterize the extent to which a country wins (loses) by changing the price (quantity) of goods in foreign trade with a particular country (countries) for the relevant period of time.The indicator of the terms of trade measures the relative dynamics of export prices over a certain period and is calculated for the analysis of foreign trade activity, which is measured by the ratio of average export earnings of goods and average costs of imports over a certain period of time. The results showed that in 2018, the price index of terms of trade decreased by 2.2%, quantitative - increased by 2.9%, ie terms of trade slightly deteriorated. The positive fact is that in 2017, all the goods selected for the study were competitive in the foreign market, which confirms the positive value of the RTA indices for these goods. The most competitive in the world market is sunflower oil. The study concluded that it is established that development of foreign markets, expansion of export orientation of production, which should become one of the main factors of economic growth of the majority of industries, are extremely important for the agrarian sector of the economy of Ukraine. Always the one who has the processing industry wins. The pace of development of manufacturing should exceed the rate of GDP growth in the country. We need to have at least 5% growth in 20 years to make up. Therefore, in the coming years, the processing industry should develop at a rate not lower than 7–8% annually.