Unpretentiousness and low cost can lead a culture from a niche to a promising one.
Gingerbread is not the most common crop in Russian fields: the maximum area under crops was recorded in 2014 (268.1 thousand hectares), and over the next years it has been constantly decreasing.
In 2020, 52 thousand hectares were sown with camelina.
Basically, the culture is grown in the Orenburg, Rostov, Saratov regions, the Republic of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan.
Export duties on wheat introduced in Russia are pushing producers to change the structure of crops, focusing on two main indicators: high margins and the absence of duties.
In 2021, 79.9 million hectares were sown in Russia for various agricultural crops (+ 0.4% compared to last year).
47 million hectares were occupied by crops of grain and leguminous crops, while the area under wheat fell by 2.4% to 28.7 million hectares, while the areas of industrial crops (Central Russian and southern hemp, sugar beets, oilseeds) increased by 14.6% to 17.6 million hectares.
Why has oilseed camelina become popular?
The culture is unpretentious, disease resistant and undemanding to the choice of predecessors.
Camelina oil and cake, for example, are used to feed poultry.
The costs of growing a crop are much lower than for growing rapeseed, which ultimately reduces the cost of the final product.
The cost of cultivation of camelina is several times lower than that of sunflower and rapeseed.
With the ability to self-control weeds, the crop does not require the use of herbicides.
Ryzhik perfectly tolerates moisture deficit and high temperatures, which plays an important role in conditions of climatic changes and anomalies.
What are the prospects for using saffron milk cap?
Camelina seeds, oil and meal are purchased from Russia by Turkey, Germany, India and other countries.
Camelina is also processed into biofuel and used as feed for aquaculture: camelina oil is the closest in composition to fish oil.
So the culture has every chance to get out of the niche position and become quite promising among other oilseeds.
