Russian wheat crop reaches 84 million tonnes as 79% of area harvested

Russian farmers had finished harvesting wheat on 29.7 million hectares by September 19, which corresponds to 78.7% of the total area sown and 83.8 million tonnes in the bins, an update from the agriculture ministry showed on Tuesday, September 19.

Although the pace of harvesting is behind last year’s pace at the same stage of the season by 10% or 13.2 million tonnes, the total crop is still expected to be at its second-highest level ever, most probably over 90 million tonnes.

This also meets the expectations of local analysts, who have been increasing their forecasts one by one since August.

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Wheat harvest estimates

At the end of August, Sovecon raised its estimate for this year’s wheat harvest by almost 5 million tonnes, to 92.1 million tonnes, due to high yields.

Rusagrotrans expects that the gross wheat harvest in Russia in 2023, according to a new last week estimate, will be 92.85 million tonnes, which is 850,000 tonnes higher than the August forecast.

The Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) also raised the wheat harvest forecast from 89.5 million tonnes to 92 million tonnes.

However, contrary to expectations, the US Department of Agriculture kept its forecast for the wheat harvest in Russia this year at 85 million tonnes in its latest World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (Wasde), and with above 80 million tonnes already threshed, the figure looks “not serious,” local analysts said.

Grain harvest current conditions

At the same time, grain harvesting in the eastern regions of Russia has faced difficult conditions over the past three to four weeks, which is capping further increases in harvest forecasts.

The barley campaign progressed by only 4 percentage points through the week to 85.5% complete, which is equivalent to 20 million tonnes.

The rapeseed harvest has reached the halfway point as 55% of the fields planted were completed, meaning 2.7 million tonnes were harvested from 1.1 million hectares.

The harvesting of corn has progressed by 5 percentage points over last week to 8.9% of the plan, which corresponds to 1.3 million tonnes gathered on 218,100 hectares.

The soybean harvest progress was also 5.6 percentage points with currently only 8.9% completed on 324,200 hectares and 685,100 tonnes in the bins.

The sunflower harvest has reached 7.4% with 1.68 million tonnes gathered from 727,100 hectares, meaning the average yield is in line with last year’s at 2.3 tonnes per hectare.

The winter crop sowing has been completed on 46% of the planned area which accounts for 8.5 million hectares out of 18.5 million hectares covered.

This includes the wheat planting completed on 7.7 million hectares, barley planted on 10,300 hectares and rapeseeds sown on 414,000 hectares.

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