Russian wheat crop exceeds 100 million tonnes

Russia’s wheat crop harvest past the 100 million tonnes mark in the week ending September 26, while the harvest is still a step away from the finish line, official data from the country’s agriculture ministry showed on Tuesday.

The figures confirmed that Russia’s total grain crop has already exceeded a record level and is not yet complete.

Russian farmers have already gathered 101.3 million tonnes of wheat from 28 million hectares sown, which corresponds to 95% of the plan, thus meaning the final figure is likely to be even higher.

The yield continued to decrease slightly over the week, with the current national average standing at 3.62 tonnes per hectare.

However, the figure is still almost 28% up compared to last year’s result.

Earlier last week, local analytical agencies pushed their clean weight estimates for the Russian wheat crop to 100 million tonnes.

Progress slowed on the barley harvest as it entered into the final stages, with 96% of the planned areas now complete and 23.8 million tonnes in the bins from 7.7 million hectares.

That figure is already higher than the USDA’s 21 million tonnes projection and already represents a record volume.

Rapeseed harvest progressed by 10 percentage points during the week to 65% completed with 3.35 million tonnes in the bins, while the yields were marginally down to 2.21 tonnes per hectare – although, again, the figure is still 20% up compared to last year.

Late crops

The late crop harvest progressed slowly over the period, with corn moved only by 2 percentage points to 9.8% compared and 1.6 million tonnes gathered – representing a significant lag versus the campaign progress in 2021.

But still, the yield shown so far is much higher than last year – at 5.86 tonnes per hectare compared to 4.56 tonnes per hectare a year ago.

The sunflower harvest is also moving slowly, with only 3.2 percentage points progressing over the week to 11%, and 2.23 million tonnes in the bins from 1.1 million hectares. Still, the yield is also significantly up year-on-year.

Soybean harvesting is 13% completed, which accounts for 911,000 tonnes from 459,000 hectares.

The data comes on the day the Russian president announced that the country had attained a record grain crop expected at 150 million tonnes, currently standing at 140 million.

That is higher than Russia’s previous record crop in the 2017-18 marketing year of 135.5 million tonnes.

Winter crops

However, the winter crop sowing campaign has started at a slower pace; amid rains that have not allowed progress and delayed farmers’ winter sowing activities.

An advancement of 12% was registered through the week, totaling 8.9 million tonnes of winter grains sown from the beginning of the season – a 12% drop from the result seen at the same stage of 2021.

That included winter wheat planted on 7.7 million hectares, winter rapeseeds on 434,000 hectares, and winter barley on only 12,000 hectares.