Russia and its Black Sea neighbour Ukraine have sown spring grains on practically the same areas as a year ago and are both aiming to increase the grain crop acreages. Russia had sown 11.1 million hectares by May 13, or 36.8 percent of the targeted area, close to the 11.3 million a year ago, in spite of a delay caused by a late spring, Russian Agriculture Ministry data on Friday showed.
Russia's chief weather forecaster Roman Vilfand said on Thursday a delay of 7-10 days in the spring sowing campaign was not critical and it could well pick up. Russia plans to sow 30.2 million hectares with spring grains this year after it had to cut the winter grain area following a severe drought in the summer of 2010. Russia officially plans to harvest 85-90 million tonnes of grain this year.
Last year's drought cut the crop to 60.9 million tonnes from 97 million tonnes in 2009 and 108 million in 2008. SovEcon agricultural analysts expect the spring sowing area to reach 28.5-29.5 million hectares this year, which is above the record low acreage of 28.1 million hectares sown last year, but below the official forecast.
The ministry said spring wheat had been sown on 2.7 million hectares, or on 19.3 percent of a targeted 14 million hectares, slightly down from the 2.8 million hectares sown a year ago, according to data obtained by Reuters. Spring barley had been sown on 4.5 million hectares, or on 59 percent of a targeted 7.7 million hectares, practically the same acreage as a year ago, the data showed.
Maize had been sown on 0.9 million hectares, or on 47.9 percent of a targeted 1.9 million hectares, down from the 1.1 million hectares sown by May 13 last year. Rice plantings were 49,400 hectares, nearly half of what Russia had sown by the same date last year. Sunflowers had been sown on 3.1 million hectares, compared to the targeted 6.8 million hectares, down from 3.8 million hectares a year ago.
UKRAINE SOWS 86 PERCENT OF TARGETED ACREAGE Ukrainian farms have sown 6.5 million hectares of spring grain for the 2011 grain harvest by May 10 or 86 percent of the targeted area, which is almost the same acreage as a year ago, Ukraine's Farm Minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk said this week. He said farmers planned to sow a total of 7.6 million hectares of spring grain this year.
Prysyazhnyuk also said Ukraine would expand its grain sowing area by about 3 percent to 15.6 million hectares in 2011. He said Ukraine would increase its the maize area by 17 percent to 3.2 million hectares from 2.74 million in 2010. The country harvested 11.9 million tonnes of maize in 2010. Prysyazhnyuk said farms had already sown 2.7 million hectares for 2011 maize harvest or about 84 percent of the planned area. He gave no maize or grain harvest forecast for this year, but Anatoly Rozgon, the head of the ministry's planting department, said late last month that Ukraine was likely to harvest up to 45 million tonnes of grain in 2011.
Ukraine harvested 39.2 million tonnes of grain in 2010. Analyst UkrAgroConsult last month said the former Soviet republic could harvest 44.5 million tonnes of grain this year, including 20.42 million of wheat, 8.85 million of barley and 12.7 million of maize.