MOSCOW: Recent heavy snowfall over parts of Ukraine and Russia may jeopardise this year's spring barley crop if the two countries are forced to push back sowing, analysts and weather forecasters said on Monday.
Record levels of snow fell on northern and western Ukraine this weekend, leaving 60 to 80 centimetres of cover. The snow layer in Moscow reached 70 centimetres in depth on Monday, a record level this winter.
The yield of spring barley in Ukraine, a traditional producer of barley and one of the world's leading exporters of the commodity, could be reduced by as much as 18 percent if sowing is significantly delayed, forecasters said.
"There's a lot of snow, and it takes time to start the sowing. The delay may last two to three weeks and this could reduce the yield of spring barley by 15 to 18 percent," Mykola Kulbida, the head of Ukraine's state weather centre, told reporters.
Analysts forecast earlier this month before the recent snowfall that Ukraine's barley harvest was likely to increase to 8.2 million tonnes in 2013 from 6.5 million tonnes in 2012.
Agriculture consultancy UkrAgroConsult said barley exports might rise to 2.8 million tonnes in the 2013/14 July-June season from 2.1 million tonnes in 2012/13.
As for Russia, heavy snowfall will push back the spring sowing campaign for early grains such as barley and oats in Russia's Central and Volga regions, the head of SovEcon agriculture analysts, Andrey Sizov, said in an interview.
"Russia's regions, which coped with the weather during winter, received the fourth month of winter as a gift," he joked.
Russia's Central and Volga regions, which accounted for 37 percent and 30 percent of Russia's 2012 barley harvest, respectively, have not yet started sowing spring barley, Sizov said. Sowing in the Central region should ideally be over by late April.
Snow is expected to continue to fall in many parts of Russia's Central and Volga regions over the next two days, while the daily average temperature in the Central region is likely to be below the standard level by 7 to 11 degrees Celsius.
Forecasters and SovEcon analysts saw no significant risk to Russia's wheat crop, its main grain export. Russia harvested almost 14 million tonnes of barley in 2012.
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