Winter is coming soon, and harvesting is far from complete everywhere.
For example, sugar beet raises questions — there are no guarantees that this season’s harvest will be fully harvested.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, as of October 27, a total of 683,000 hectares of sugar beets have been harvested. This is a noticeable lag: a year ago, by the same date, 840 thousand hectares had already been harvested.
True, this year the yield is higher: it is about 454 centners per hectare, last year’s value was 391.
Who are the outsiders?
In a number of regions, cleaning has already been completed.
For example, Altai completed this process, and with a good result: it harvested 1.2 million tons of beets, which is more than last year’s 1.1 million tons.
In the south of the country, most likely, the harvest will also be completely harvested, according to the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies.
By October 25, the beets were already dug up by 72%.
But a number of regions of the Center and the Volga region raises questions.
These are, for example, Bryansk region, as well as Bashkiria.
The main problem is the weather: now it is raining there, which does not allow to start cleaning. And after just a couple of weeks, frosts can begin.
Then that part of the harvest that they do not have time to extract from the ground is likely to be lost.
Problems exist, for example, in Voronezh region.
They have already lowered their forecasts for the harvest of sugar beets from 4.9 million tons to 4 million tons.
The weather is also a problem. For example, this year there was a very rainy September, in which 70 mm of precipitation fell instead of the norm of 46 mm.
This caused a delay in the beginning of the harvest, as it took some time for the earth to dry out at least a little.
A number of other regions are also behind schedule. For example, in the Volga region 77% of the area with sugar beets has been harvested so far, while in Centre only 57%.
How much sugar can be produced?
In general, IKAR believes that the country will be able to count on 6.4 million tons of sugar this season.
But this, however, is only if the entire sown culture can be removed, and in addition, if it is preserved after harvesting and before processing begins.
The same weather could interfere with this: in the case when a sharp thaw suddenly sets in after frost, you can lose part of the already harvested crop.
As a result, there is a risk that the forecast for sugar production at 6.4 million tons may also be revised down.
At the moment, Russia has already produced only 2.64 million tons of sugar from this year’s harvest.
