Despite the less than favorable weather conditions this season, the Russian department generally maintains its forecasts for all major agricultural crops.
The Russian Ministry of Agriculture is maintaining its forecast for the gross grain harvest in the country this year at 132 million tons, and the export volume at 60 million tons. This was recently announced by Russian Minister of Agriculture Oksana Lut.
According to her, the harvesting campaign is now nearing completion, grain has been threshed on 70% of the area, which is about 33 million hectares.
A total of 97 million tons of grain have been harvested, including 72 million tons of wheat. At the same time, as the minister noted, the quality of the grain is much better compared to last year.
However, in certain regions, harvesting is not going well.
For example, in the Volga region and the Urals, harvesting is complicated by rains, and in some other regions, farmers had to face frosts and drought, which resulted in a decrease in yield.
In Kursk Oblast, due to the geopolitical situation, harvesting of about 160 thousand hectares is in question. Most likely, it will not be possible to harvest them this year, which could lead to losses of about 1.5 million tons of grain.
Rostov Oblast also has problems.
According to Governor Vasily Golubev, spring frosts worsened the condition of about 1 million hectares of crops, and the summer drought could reduce the harvest by another 30%.
As a result, the gross harvest in this region could amount to only 11.5 million tons compared to 16.2 million tons at the end of last year, the governor noted.
Despite all these difficulties, the Ministry of Agriculture still expects that the forecast value for grain harvesting at the level of 132 million tons will still be achieved.
In addition, the Ministry expects good results for some other crops, including oilseeds, fruits and berries.
For example, it is planned that farmers will be able to harvest 1.7 million fruits, including 1.6 million tons of apples.
Despite the fact that spring frosts have generally called into question the availability of a harvest this year, such values would be higher than the average for the last 5 years, Oksana Lut noted.
All this means, according to her, that this year Russia will be able to both provide its domestic market with the main agricultural crops and ensure high exports.
This applies to both raw materials and various processed products, which have been given special emphasis in recent years.
Meanwhile, winter crop sowing has already begun in many regions. It is planned that it will be carried out on 20 million hectares, which is the same as last year.
