Rainy weather in some Russian regions is posing a risk to next year's grain crop, an Agriculture Ministry official said on Friday. The ministry's pessimistic outlook for the 2018 crop, follows its downbeat predictions about this year's crop. Its forecast is far lower than most unofficial estimates.
"So far, next year does not really promise a good harvest. That is why we should have reserves for next year," Pyotr Chekmarev, head of the ministry's crop-growing department, told a conference in Moscow. According to him, farmers "have delayed winter grain plantings."
The ministry's data does not show any significant delays in plantings this autumn so far. As of September 21, farmers had sown winter grains for next year's crop over 57.5 percent of the planned area, or over 10.0 million hectares, compared with 10.1 million hectares on the same date a year ago. Farmers plan to sow winter grains over 17.5 million hectares in total, according to the ministry, compared with 17.4 million hectares a year ago.
The head of the ProZerno grain consultancy, Vladimir Petrichenko, told the same conference it was too early to say whether the current weather was posing a risk to the 2018 grain crop. Russia is widely expected to harvest a record grain crop this year and become the world's largest wheat exporter in the marketing year, which started on July 1.
However, Russia's Agriculture Ministry has been keeping its modest forecast for Russia's 2017 grain crop unchanged at 110 million tonnes by clean weight, lower than unofficial analysts' estimates of around 133 million tonnes. The reason for this difference, the ministry has said, is that there is a risk that some of Russia's regions would not be able to harvest their grain before the cold weather sets in.
Farmers have already harvested 117.7 million tonnes of grain by bunker weight - before drying and cleaning - from 80.9 percent of the total area as of September 21. The drying and cleaning usually reduces the harvest by only several percentage points.
Comments
Comments are closed.