September 21, 2010

Russian 2010 grain crop may fall to 59 million tonnes

SovEcon has slightly cut its estimate of Russia's grain output from 60 million tonnes to 59-60 million tonnes, which is also below the official forecast of a little over 60 million tonnes.

Russia, devastated by a severe drought, had harvested 51 million tonnes of grain by bunker weight by September 15, down 34% from a year ago.

Grains had been threshed on 26.4 million hectares, or 74% of the total harvesting area by September 15. Average yields declined this year to 1.93 tonnes per hectare from 2.46 tonnes per hectare a year ago.

According to Russia's Agriculture ministry data, grain crop has been lost on eight million hectares out of 43.6 million sown for this year's grain crop. Therefore, farmers have yet to harvest grains from nine million hectares.

However, this is an optimistic scenario. In many regions of European Russia the harvesting has finished, but part of the acreage on which grains had been threshed, according to the ministry, was left idle due to low yields, or complete crop destruction.

These areas are located in the regions along the Volga river and their total acreage may be up to one million hectares.

This means that the area on which crops have been lost may rise to nine million hectares, while the area left to harvest will be 8-8.3 million hectares mainly in Siberia and the Urals.

Current average yields in Siberia are 1.48 tonnes per hectare and in the Urals 1.24 tonnes per hectare. Taking into account yields of corn and rice, the harvesting of which continues, average yields may be 1.5-1.55 tonnes per hectare.

Therefore, SovEcon believes that an additional grain crop will be 12-12.9 million tonnes by bunker weight with the total gross crop equalling 63-63.9 million tonnes, or 59-60 million tonnes by clean weight.