According to the Ministry of Agriculture, so far most of the crops are in good condition, which gives hope for a good harvest.
At the moment, 94% of crops are in good condition, said Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Russia Andrei Razin. Another achievement of the last 5 years was the increase in cultivated area from 80 million hectares to 85 million hectares.
According to the deputy minister, this opens up good opportunities to increase production and take a worthy place in the world market.
At the same time, our own food security is already ensured at a fairly high level.
In general, the harvest is expected to be smaller than last year, says Vladimir Petrichenko, general director of the analytical company ProZerno.
For example, this is due to the fact that a decrease in the areas that will be sown with barley and spring wheat is expected. At the moment, sowing has just begun, about 3% of all areas are sown.
However, the condition of winter crops for the most part does not cause great concern; a significant part of the crops went through the winter well.
At the same time, other experts do not rule out good results from the current agricultural season.
For example, the general director of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, Dmitry Rylko, believes that this year the grain harvest in Russia could reach 147 million tons.
This will be practically a record, since last year the harvest was 143 million tons (taking into account new regions — 147 million tons).
The Russian Grain Union predicts the total grain harvest at 145 million tons, of which about 93 million tons are wheat.
Farmers are generally ready for sowing
Experts note that the supply of seeds to farmers is now at a high level, and it is significantly higher than last year.
According to Andrei Razin, now 100% of the required volume of grain and leguminous seeds is ready for sowing. As for fertilizers, producers also already have them in the required quantities; the purchase plan has even been exceeded by 1-2%.
An important achievement of this year was that the share of domestically selected seeds has increased significantly, which allows Russia to significantly reduce its dependence on imports.
Taking all this into account, there are all the prerequisites for this year’s harvest to be really good.
For example, the SovEcon analytical center on March 27 raised its forecast for the wheat harvest in Russia to 94 million tons.
This is largely due to favorable weather conditions for winter crops. True, the weather can still bring surprises, and especially now, when the sowing of spring crops begins in full swing.
