February 12, 2013

In search of higher profits, farmers in Russia will plant more feed-type grains such as corn and oilseeds in the central Black Earth area for 2013-14.

Farmers made the shift because wheat yields there are lower and transportation to export ports more expensive than in southern regions, according to Oleg Sukhanov, an analyst at the Moscow-based Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, or Ikar.

Corn typically gives bigger yields in the area's fertile soils than in the south, and has a ready market in the livestock farms that are clustered in the vicinity, Sukhanov said on Sunday (Feb 10). Corn yields in the Belgorod region were 6.2 tonnes a hectare (2.47 acres) this season, compared with about five tonnes a hectare in the southern Stavropol region, according to the regions' agricultural ministries.

"It's a trend in central Russia," Sukhanov said. "That is why we have had record corn harvests in the past two years."

Russia's corn crop was eight million tonnes in 2012, beating the previous record of seven million tonnes in 2011, according to state statistics data. Russia may be the seventh-largest corn exporter in the 2012-13 season, after the US, Argentina, Brazil, Ukraine, India and South Africa, shipping 2.3 million tonnes, 13% more than the previous year, according to USDA estimates. The country produced 37.7 million tonnes of wheat in 2012-13, a 33% plunge to a nine-year low, after drought curbed production.

"We are changing the sowing structure in general this year toward more energy effective grains like corn and soy and will expand their fields further," Yevgeny Savchenko, Belgorod governor, told Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on February 5. Tambov, another Black Earth region, will double its corn plantings for the 2013-14 crop, Governor Oleg Betin said at the same meeting, without giving specific figures. Sowing typically starts in April in the Black Earth area.

Wheat added 19% in 2012, climbing to the highest in almost four years in July, as drought damaged crops from the US to Europe. World production of wheat may be 656 million tonnes in 2012-13, less than the previous year's harvest at 696 million tonnes, according to the IGC, which forecast inventories to fall 22 million tonnes from the previous year to 174 million tonnes.

The Black Earth area accounted for 20% of Russia's national grains crop after harvesting about 14 million tonnes of grains this season, according to state statistics data. The area includes the regions of Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk, Oryol and Tambov.