Russia expects to reprise its role as a leading grain exporter this season thanks to a good harvest after last year’s severe drought forced it to impose an export embargo, Agriculture MinisterYelena Skrynnik said.
Russia anticipates grain exports of 18mt (million tonnes) in the 2011/12 crop year that began in July, Skrynnik was quoted as saying.
“We shall return to our position on the world grain market,” ISkrynnik said. “This year’s export will total 18mt.”
This is in line with the export estimate from leading Russian agricultural analysts SovEcon, which recently revised its forecast upwards by 3mt to 18mt.
“Of this, some 16mt will be wheat and some 1.5 million — barley,” SovEcon’s chief executive and president Andrei Sizov said.
Russia exported 18mt of wheat in the pre-drought 2009/10 season and 2.8mt of barley.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced the lifting of a ban on grain exports from 1 July, bringing what was formerly the world’s third-largest wheat exporter back to world grain markets.
First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said in July that customs officials had already received requests to clear 6.5mt of grain for export, of which the country expected to export 1.5mt in July.
Russia exported 770,000 tonnes of grain between 1 July and 13 July, Zubkov said.
Skrynnik confirmed that Russia might reap 85mt to 90mt of grain this year, up from 61mt in 2010.
“This is enough to cover internal needs
and build up an exportable surplus,” she said. Favourable weather at the end of June and beginning of July
has led SovEcon to raise its crop forecast to 87mt to 92mt from a previous 82mt to 86mt.
The Institute for Agricultural Market Studies think tank has raised its crop forecast to 87mt from 85mt to 86mt.
The State Statistics Service said that farmers had increased the area sown with grains by 1.2% year on year to 44.1mt.
The latest Agriculture Ministry harvesting progress report showed that, although the harvesting campaign was lagging behind last year’s, average grain yields rose by a third to 3.7 tonnes per hectare.