Bulgaria sees wheat crop up to 3.8 million tonnes

Good weather and state farm subsidies have helped push Bulgaria's 2004 wheat crop up to a better-than-expected 3.8 million tonnes, one million of which should go to exports, a senior official said on Tuesday.
"The wheat harvest is almost complete and preliminary figures show we have a crop of 3.7 million - 3.8 million tonnes," Deputy Agriculture Minister Boiko Boev told Reuters.
"I expect wheat exports to reach over 1.0 million tonnes."
The poor Balkan state, which suffered from grain shortages in 2003 due to drought and reduced sowings, also expects its barley harvest to beat forecasts, with a yield of 1.15 million tonnes, Boev said.
At the start of the season, the agriculture ministry forecast a wheat crop of 3.2 million tonnes, and said some 800,000 tonnes might be sold on world markets.
Ample rain and a quality seed supply has boosted yields to a 10-year high of 3.9 tonnes per hectare for wheat, he said.
More than 50 percent of the total wheat harvest, which is now 98 percent complete, will go for human consumption.
Around 125,000 tonnes of wheat have been exported so far this season from the country's two major Black Sea ports of Varna and Burgas, mainly to Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy, according to regional agriculture and port officials.
Another 51,400 tonnes of wheat, destined for Spain, were currently being loaded on three ships, port officials said.
"Some 35,400 tonnes of wheat are now being loaded on a ship bound for Spain, and a ship with 7,500 tonnes on board is waiting to sail to the same destination," a Varna port spokesman said.
A Burgas port official said a ship carrying some 8,500 tonnes would leave in the next couple of days.
Another, loaded with 10,000 tonnes of wheat, left for Spain yesterday and was not included in the 51,400 figure.
Bulgaria had also exported some 90,000 tonnes of the 2004 barley crop, mainly to Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Middle East, port officials said.
One ship carrying 8,000 tonnes of barley was ready to sail to Turkey and another with 3,000 tonnes was destined for Greece from Varna, the port spokesman said.
The EU aspirant country exhausted its annual 275,000 tonne quota to sell wheat into the EU at a zero tariff in mid-July.