Turkmenistan plans bigger wheat crop this year

Turkmenistan, a new entrant to the list of global wheat exporters, plans a 14 percent increase in its crop this year that should free up 400,000 tonnes for export, a source within the government told Reuters on Friday. The gas-rich Central Asian state of 5 million people plans to harvest 1.6 million tonnes of wheat this year, the source said. This compares with 1.4 million tonnes in 2010, when the desert nation exported wheat for the first time.
"The harvest has already begun," said the source. Like most government officials in the reclusive former Soviet republic, he did not want to be identified. Turkmenistan, which has a Caspian Sea coastline and borders Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, is among the driest countries in the world. Its crops rely heavily on irrigation channels and desert covers 70 percent of its land. In Soviet times, it depended almost entirely on wheat deliveries from other republics of the Soviet Union. Annual domestic wheat consumption today is 1.2 million tonnes.
Agriculture Ministry data show that around 2,000 combine harvesters produced by Deere & Co and CNH Global N.V., under its Case brand, are being deployed in the current harvesting campaign. The ministry says almost 900,000 hectares have been sown to wheat this year, an area almost the same size as Cyprus. Turkmen state statistics are usually treated with scepticism by outsiders. Only Eritrea and North Korea scored worse than Turkmenistan in the 2010 press freedom index compiled by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. But President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, whose word is final in a country with no discernible opposition, has publicly called for an end to the practice of inflating production data.
He has dismissed as "overstated" the previous annual harvest data in excess of 2 million tonnes which began to appear from 2001, under the rule of his predecessor and Turkmenistan's first post-Soviet leader, Saparmurat Niyazov. Turkmen farmers sold excess wheat from last year's crop on the state commodity exchange, while a small amount was delivered to neighbouring Iran as a Persian New Year gift in March.
The source did not identify future export markets, although demand from Iran is strong. Kazakhstan plans to deliver more grain to Iran via a new railway line through Turkmenistan that is under construction. Kazakhstan is by far the largest grain producer and exporter in Central Asia. It forecasts exports of 6 million tonnes in the current marketing year.