Kazakh grain harvest likely to fall sharply

Kazakhstan's grain harvest, though likely to fall sharply from last year's record, will not be abnormally low in 2010 as key grain-growing regions have been relatively unscathed by drought. While drought has ravaged crops in the west of the country, Kazakhstan - among the world's top 10 wheat exporters - can rely on production from its arable northern regions to maintain shipments in the new marketing year, officials said on Friday.
"Three provinces account for 80 percent of Kazakhstan's wheat, and they have not been too badly affected," said Nurlan Tleubayev, president of the Grain Union of Kazakhstan. Drought is forcing Black Sea grain exporters to cut their outlook for the 2010 harvest and is likely to reduce exports in the marketing year that began on July 1. Moscow is sweltering through its hottest days in nearly 30 years.
Agriculture Minister Akylbek Kurishbayev forecast on July 20 that Kazakhstan's gross grain harvest would fall to between 13.5 million tonnes and 14.5 million tonnes in 2010, up to 35 percent below the record 20.8 million tonnes last year. But officials point out that last year's high crop was an anomaly. Kazakhstan harvested 15.6 million tonnes in 2008.
Tleubayev said yields would be lower, but crop losses would be minimal in Akmola, Kostanai and North Kazakhstan provinces, the Central Asian country's three main grain regions.
"Yes, there's a drought, so the harvest will be lower than last year, but we're looking at somewhere close to average." Tleubayev estimated these three provinces would produce a combined 11 million tonnes of grain this year, while Kazakhstan's entire harvest would be around 13.5 million tonnes, the lower end of the ministry's latest forecast.
Western regions have been worst hit by drought, but their contribution to national output is much smaller. In West Kazakhstan province, temperatures have risen to 41 degrees Celsius, said Nikolai Zinchenko, head of the ministry's land division in the region. This has resulted in crop losses on 310,400 hectares - 58 percent of the entire sown acreage in the province, or an area three times the size of Hong Kong. A further 16 percent of the crop is in poor condition, he said.
Prime Minister Karim Masimov, visiting Oral on Thursday on a tour of western Kazakhstan, ordered the creation of a working group to fight the drought in different regions, the Agriculture Ministry quoted him as saying on its website, www.minagri.kz.