January 16, 2012

Kazakhstan yielded a record grain crop of 26.9 million tonnes last year due to favourable weather conditions and better technology, the head of the state statistics agency said Friday (Jan 13).

The 2011 harvest was the biggest since 1986, when Kazakhstan was still part of the Soviet Union, and is more than double the amount of grain produced by the central Asian country in 2010, when drought damaged harvests across the Black Sea grain region.

"We've had this size of harvest before, in 1986, but at that time the sown area was 50% greater than last year," said Alikhan Smailov, chairman of the State Statistics Agency.

He later elaborated that the sown area in 2011 was 16.2 million hectares, compared with 24.6 million hectares in 1986.

Kazakhstan is among the world's top 10 exporters of wheat and for the last few years has been its largest flour exporter.

Its previous post-Soviet record crop, 20.8 million tonnes, was achieved in 2009.

After last year's bumper crop, officials say the country could have 15 million tonnes of wheat and flour available for export in the current marketing year, although limited access to rail cars that must cross thousands of miles to reach the Black Sea ports may cap shipments.

An official at state-owned grain trader the Food Contract Corporation said on December 5 that this season's exports would probably not exceed about 10 million tonnes, including flour in grain equivalent.

Kazakhstan exported 5.9 million tonnes of wheat and flour in the marketing year to June 30, 2011.