It turned out to be profitable for Russia to harvest a smaller grain crop

Before each spring, we begin old songs about the main thing – what we sow and what we reap. So far, experts’ forecasts on this score are not very optimistic. According to them, winter crops (snow is still whitening in the fields) this year we will lose 6% of the area. Blame, of course, the weather. Little rain fell in the south of the country this winter. There are problems in other regions as well.

This is reported in the report of the analytical center “Rusagrotrans”. The biggest losses (on 15% of the area) are expected in the Central Federal District, where the weather generally presented a rare natural phenomenon – ground-in ice crust. According to farmers, this is the worst thing that winter crops can expect. It is formed in the fields due to temperature differences – nighttime negative and daytime positive. Something similar was already in this very Central Federal District in 2021, then the loss of winter crops was 40%.

In addition, frosts in some subjects of the Federation with little snow damaged the tillering nodes of plants, which also reduces the prospects for harvest. And in general, by the end of February, in some other grain regions, a ground-in ice crust may also form. Then the percentage of crop loss will increase even more.

The authors of the report estimate the grain harvest this year at 127 million tons – against 155 million in 2022. This is a disappointing preliminary forecast for crop production.

As for the grain harvest, one of the factors for its decline may be the price of wheat on the domestic market. Elite Krasnodar food wheat these days costs around 14 thousand rubles per ton, it has not risen above 15 thousand during the current season at all. Although a year ago exactly the same wheat cost 18-20 thousand rubles.

Not all grain growers, due to the low profitability of production, will dare to sow spring grains, will switch to more stable and profitable crops. But that’s the way it is…

In fact, we always panic before each sowing campaign. And in the end, Russia is among the world’s largest grain powers. The loss of 6% of the area of ​​winter crops does not play any big role.

In 2022, we sowed almost 5% less winter crops (17.7 million hectares) than in 2021. There was also a fear that we would not collect anything. And the harvest, as you know, turned out to be a record one, 155 million tons. Now we don’t know where to store it and how to sell it to other countries under sanctions.

This is where some experts see a “knight’s move” in the actions of the agrarian department. The point is this record harvest.

According to the Yakov and Partners agency, more than 20 million tons of wheat, barley, and rye remain in the elevators and storage facilities, which we are not yet able to export. And the storage of such a volume of crops will cost the budget 260 billion rubles.

In the current situation, it is beneficial for our farmers to “bend over” the world by the fact that Russia, a major world exporter, will harvest noticeably less grain this year than in 2022. Then there will be a rush on the world stock exchanges, prices for wheat will go up and we will be able to profitably sell, if not all stocks of grain, then, of course, a significant part of it.

The storage of grain crops at high yields (and, as we see from last year, in our country, no, no, and they do happen) is becoming a big problem for the domestic agro-industrial complex. It is easier for large agricultural holdings in this regard. But what about the farms, which, by the way, grow about 30% of bread?

– To store – and not to suffer losses, this does not happen, – Nina Popova, a farmer from the Korenevsky district of the Krasnodar Territory, told our newspaper. – The problem is that small producers do not have any capacity for storing grain. Due to last year’s high harvest, these farms kept their wheat on the current, they simply could not sell it right away. In the rain, of course, it deteriorated and from this the losses were impressive. We store in a simple warehouse, our costs are in the protection of barns and in the consumption of electricity.

– And if you use the services of state elevators?

– These are commercial structures, not state ones. We have not been working with elevators since 2010. They either buy grain from the manufacturer, and then dispose of it at their own discretion. Or they take it for storage impersonally, but such services are not cheap. There are high storage costs, their own technology.