Pre-harvest meeting of the board of the Ministry of Agriculture of Stavropol.
The participants discussed painful issues, including damage from precipitation and ending with the readiness of special equipment to work.
Silence reigned in the hall when it came to forecasting the cost of grain this year.
There is insurance against hail, no insurance against an increase in value
The head of the Stavropol agricultural farm Vladimir Sitnikov assessed the situation in the fields in the regions as «not bad».
Although he noted that from the beginning of the sowing campaign, winter crops constantly suffered from the weather — lack of precipitation in autumn, excessive humidity in spring and strong hail in summer.
As of mid-June, about 17 thousand hectares were affected by hail in the Stavropol Territory.
The same number of victims suffered in the Kirovsky district in just one day, of which 3 thousand hectares were completely destroyed.
Not a single hectare of this territory has been insured, although the process of agricultural insurance in the region is popularized thanks to budgetary compensation to farmers.
For the Stavropol Territory, about 700 million rubles were allocated, which turned out to be insufficient. In addition, another 200 million were allocated.
If during last year’s campaign no one was insured against a natural disaster, then this year 15 companies and individuals signed insurance contracts. One of these is the Luch enterprise, where members of the council gathered to discuss this issue.
Farmers of the region receive loans with benefits under the state support program, while orders for leasing equipment are stalled.
V. Sitnikov:
— “Last year, 511 applications were filed with a total amount of about 3 billion rubles. 56% of farmers (approx. 1.8 billion rubles) were refused, the situation has not changed today. I see only one way out — to carry out additional capitalization of agricultural leasing in Russia ”.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Dryiger said that the harvest would have to be done from an area of 2.2 million hectares.
This is more than last year, when due to frost and drought it was necessary to write off some of the winter crops that were most affected by the disaster.
The bulk of cereals is wheat (1.8 million hectares), another 200 thousand hectares fall on barley. Winter rapeseed may become a deficit, of which 64 thousand hectares are less than half.
According to Dridiger’s forecast, in 2021 it is planned to harvest about 8 million tons of grain, which on average per hectare is about 38.6 centners.
It is expected that in connection with the weather disasters, which are predicted in many countries, the price of grain exports will rise again.
Recently alone, the cost has increased by about 40%, in Russia prices have risen to the level of 19 thousand rubles. for one ton.
Most likely, this is not the limit — analyst Dmitry Rylko thinks so:
— “The cost is influenced by many factors: supply in the global market, inflation launched in the United States by investing billions from the» covid fund «to help the population during a pandemic, which has caused the prices of almost all products to rise. The South of Ukraine has suffered greatly from the rains, the Romanian sector is at risk ”.
