Russia's winter grain area is expected to be lower than initially planned but the state of sprouts is good, an analyst said on Thursday, while the weather forecasting service expects the conditions to favour plants in November. Winter wheat is the main winter crop sown in Russia, which also sows winter barley and winter rape. Winter wheat, which has higher yields than spring wheat, accounted for 54-68 percent of the total wheat crop in 2006-2010.
Russia harvested just 41.5 million tonnes of wheat in the drought-hit 2010, down from 61.7 million in 2009 and 63.8 million in 2008. The area to be sown with grains this year for the 2012 crop is expected to be around 16.8 million hectares, which is 0.7 million hectares up from the area sown a year ago following a severe drought, SovEcon agricultural analysts said in a note.
But the state of plantings is estimated as good and satisfactory practically everywhere in Russia, it added. This year's winter grain area is some 2 million hectares smaller than sown in 2009 for the 2010 crop, but it is bigger than the area sown for the 2009 crop and is equal to the acreage sown for the 2008 crop, the two biggest crops since 1990s, it said.
The winter grain sowing campaign is practically over in all regions except in the south of Russia, where rains have slowed progress. But the rains have increased soil moisture, creating good conditions for plant development and wintering, SovEcon said. Normally, sprout vegetation in the central regions and along the Volga ends around October 13-18, but this year the plants developed throughout the month as the weather stayed warm.
Comments
Comments are closed.