Introduction. The active movement of Ukraine towards integration into the world economy, the liberalization of customs regimes, the expansion of sales markets and the introduction of innovations have created new prospects for the progress of the production of exports-oriented agricultural products. Foreign economic activity plays a significant role in the economy of the country, affects its internal dynamics and competitiveness, so the research of trends in the formation of commodity exports are of current importance.
Aim and tasks. The aim of the article is to research the dynamics of progress and the current state of the agricultural sector of the economy of Ukraine in the field of crop production, the contribution to it of the main categories of farms and the role of the agricultural sector in the formation of the exports potential of the country. For the solvation of this problem, a number of statistical materials, scientific publications and Internet resources on the indicators of production activities of agricultural enterprises were used, the methods of mathematical statistics and economic and mathematical modeling were applied.
Results. The conducted researches allowed to evaluate the contribution of the main categories of farms to crop production in 2010-2017. To estimate the distribution of land between agricultural enterprises the Lorenz curve was constructed, the Gini coefficient and the Hoover index were calculated. Calculations showed that 81.5% of enterprises had 13.4% of the total land area, and in order to achieve an equal distribution of land between enterprises, it is necessary to redistribute 68% of the land areas. It has been established that in the agricultural sector of Ukraine there is a polarization in the production of agricultural products – small-scale forms of management dominate in the production of labor-intensive and low-income goods, while products of powerful agricultural enterprises have a high yield and low labor intensity. One of the leading places in crop production is the cultivation of sunflower due to its high profitability. Linear and multiplicative regression models of dependence of the volume of sunflower production. It was determined that high levels in the structure of commodity exports of Ukraine belong to sunflower oil, wheat, corn, barley, rapeseed and soybeans, and it was noted the important role of agricultural holdings in forming the exports potential.
Conclusions. Agricultural enterprises, in particular, holdings, which have more opportunities than households for increasing their production through the introduction of innovations and the scale of production play a growing role in the production of agricultural products . Ukraine makes a significant contribution to global food security, but its position in the world markets as a producer and supplier of raw materials is fixed. Exports of goods with a low level of added value largely depend on fluctuations in world prices, which contributes to the sensitivity of the domestic economy to external negative trends, therefore, Ukrainian commodity exports need to diversify and increase the share of high technological value added goods.