Eastern Europe 2010 grain harvests seen flat to lower

 

 

Grain harvests in Eastern Europe this year are forecast to be no higher than in 2009 as farmers devote less land to wheat, analysts and officials said.

 

Analysts in Russia and Ukraine expect the ex-Soviet nations to produce less grain than their governments are forecasting, while low prices in Poland have prompted farmers there to cut the sowings area.

 

Hungary's 2010 wheat harvest is expected to match last year's, but farmers may face difficulties selling the crop due to low market demand, the country's grain lobby group said.

 

Russia, the largest East European grain producer, officially expects to harvest 95 million tonnes this year, 2% less than the 97 million tonnes produced in 2009. Analysts are forecasting a crop of 88-89 million tonnes due to the late spring and a cut in the spring grain area in favour of other crops.

 

Wheat accounts for roughly 60% of the total grain crop in Russia. In 2009, the wheat crop was 61.7 million tonnes.

 

Russia's Agriculture Ministry expects farmers to harvest 46-48 million tonnes of winter grains this year. Of the 18 million hectares sown with winter grains for the 2010 crop, it said 90% were in good or satisfactory condition. The spring grain sowing area may be 30 million hectares, close to last year's acreage.

 

But Russia must sow more land this year with feed crops, including corn, soy and rapeseeds, in order to stimulate a rise in domestic animal breeding, the ministry added.

 

In Ukraine, Agriculture Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk has forecast a 2010 grain crop of 46-47 million tonnes, compared with the 46 million tonnes harvested in 2009.

 

Prysyazhnyuk said that winter-kill losses could amount to 10-15% of the total area sown in autumn for the 2010 harvest. But on Tuesday, he said favourable weather would allow farmers to avoid large losses.

 

Official data shows Ukrainian winter grains are in good or satisfactory condition on 85.7% of the planted area. Farms have lost 2.6%, or 226,400 hectares, of the sown area, while another 12% of the area is in poor condition.

 

However, analyst forecasts are lower, cutting grain crop forecast to 43.3 million tonnes from its previous estimate of 43.5 million tonnes as wheat is expected to be harvested from a smaller area this year.