Kazakhstan's 2005 grain crop rose to 15.432 million tonnes by bunker weight with almost all harvesting completed but heavy rains have affected the crop's quality, the Agriculture Ministry said on Monday.
The figure was calculated after 99.3 percent of fields had been harvested, the ministry said. It gave a comparative figure for 2004 of 13.385 million tonnes, based on data when 98.3 percent of the crop had been harvested. "The northern grain belt has practically finished the harvest, there are only small farms left," said an official from the Agriculture Ministry.
"The quantity this year is greater but the quality is worse, due to rain." Harvesting came to a halt for two weeks last month due to heavy rains, which the ministry said, were likely to make the Central Asian state miss its grain crop forecasts.
The official said he could not yet give a clean weight figure for the crop, which had earlier been predicted at 13.4 million tonnes by the ministry. "Usually we take off 1.5 million tonnes (from the bunker weight figure) but this year it will be more than that due to the germinating, moist grain," he said.
Most Kazakh grain is wheat, although the country does not usually publish an exact breakdown.