According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the total grain harvest for 2024 could be 130 million tons, which is the fifth largest result in the country’s history.
Despite all the difficulties of last year, including unfavorable weather conditions, Russian farmers managed to go through the year more than worthily.
This is confirmed by the fact that they managed to harvest 130 million tons of grain, said Minister of Agriculture Oksana Lut. Neither late May frosts, nor rains, nor drought could prevent this.
At the same time, good results are not only for grain.
As for oilseeds, it can be said that farmers have succeeded even more: they managed to harvest record volumes of soybeans and rapeseed. In general, the harvest of oilseeds reached 30 million tons, which can be considered a very significant achievement.
Lut noted that in the current 2025, it is planned to further improve the results for oilseeds, for this purpose, agricultural producers are going to increase the area under crops, which in case of favorable weather during the growing season will allow for an even more significant harvest.
The minister also noted that farmers managed to cope with a rather ambitious task that they faced several years ago, namely, to refuse to import GMO soybeans.
Thanks to the fact that the soybean harvest within the country was brought to the level of 7 million tons, Russia has reached full self-sufficiency in this type of product, and thanks to this, it no longer requires soybean supplies from abroad, which should generally have a positive effect on the market.
However, soybean producers certainly have room for development, because there is significant demand for this crop abroad, in particular, in China.
Therefore, increasing soybean production in the regions of the Far East, which directly border China, can be considered the next important direction for the development of the agro-industrial complex.
As for rapeseed, there is much more uncertainty about it today.
The fact is that Europe used to be the largest consumer of rapeseed oil, which has significantly reduced the volume of cooperation with Russia. Therefore, there is a threat that rapeseed crops will be reduced.
At the same time, the Russian Federation has already managed to find alternative sales markets, so there is hope that this will not happen. At least, it is unlikely that we can count on an increase in rapeseed production this year.
Finally, agricultural producers also managed to achieve impressive results in rice, reaching a level of 1.2 million tons, which is higher than the 2022 level — before the accident at the Fyodorovsky hydroelectric complex, which was a strong blow to rice growing.
The minister notes that if farmers manage to reach the level of 1.5 million tons, this will not only fully cover the domestic demand for rice within the country, but also move on to active export of this crop.
