Record heat knocked down vegetable crops in Russia

Abnormal heat set in almost all regions of Russia in August. Which grows stronger day by day. Someone will say – a real summer, it has not been in our area for a long time. And someone will think about the fate of the harvest, which until recently was predicted to have unprecedented records. What will happen to the bins of the motherland if the drought lasts, as forecasters promise, for a few more days?

The only plus in the established heat is that you can harvest around the clock where it is. That is what the local peasants do. Cereals for the season managed to gain wax ripeness, bread is threshed day and night, even in the headlights.

But potatoes and vegetables, our infamous borscht set, according to which we used to check our wallets, were not very lucky. The capital’s summer residents, who have planted vegetable plots on their acres, are in complete disarray. Trial diggings (the harvest is not yet fully ripe) show that, most likely, it will not ripen. Due to the lack of moisture in the soil, the tubers were born small, slightly larger than peas. And in terms of the number of tubers, a complete breakdown – how many were planted, the same number will be harvested.

According to experts, commodity producers will get the same story – a potato with a pigeon’s egg. Probably, the standard for retail chains will be introduced again in terms of the size of potatoes – from 30 millimeters in diameter. As it was a year ago, when the Potato Union “imposed” on the trade to accept “second bread” of a smaller size. And he convinced that such tubers are the best large ones.

However, as Evgeny Simakov, Doctor of Agricultural Sciences, Chief Researcher of the All-Russian Research Institute of Potato Growing, explained to us, this is … really so! Small tubers are more useful for the body, they collect less nitrates and pesticides, they are also more dense in mass than watery large potatoes weighing 120 grams or more.

“The most ideal in terms of weight are 70-80 grams, up to a hundred. I hope there will be enough of these on the shelves. But there will also be a lot of small fraction.”

Let’s take note: in supermarkets, like a year ago, caliber standards will change. But this is not at all scary, it even turns out that there is a blessing in disguise.

But how much did the August drought affect the harvest? The farmers themselves claim that they will not get 20-30 percent of vegetables. Although at the beginning of the month the forecasts for these crops were very optimistic.

– They call me from different regions, they offer to sell early potatoes for 11-12 rubles, – Stepan Solomnikov, a farmer from Ruza, told us then. – A year ago at this time from the field it cost 35 rubles and even more. Tubers are practically without peel, that is, young. When the mass cleaning begins, they will become even cheaper. Bulk onions from the field 10 rubles, carrots – 11 per kilogram.

In general, overproduction of vegetables was expected in parallel with a sharp drop in the cost of a borscht set. After all, after a not entirely successful past year, the producers thought that cabbage would cost 85 rubles this year, so they planted a lot of it. The same story with potatoes – it was predicted that in 2022 its price would rise to 200 rubles per kilo. And everyone rushed to plant it too.

Now it is clear that due to the established heat, gross collections are unlikely to please us. Producers are especially concerned about the basis of the future crop – seeds. The Ministry of Agriculture almost by order recommends switching to domestic planting material. But what quality seeds will grow after such a summer – that is the question.

According to Yevgeny Simakov, the situation will finally clear up in September, when mass harvesting will begin.

– Potato plantations in many regions are irrigated, there are no problems there, – he believes. – However, there are areas where not a single drop of rain has fallen since June. Therefore, we will not receive the expected gross harvest of 22 million tons of tubers at the beginning of the season. Most likely, everything will remain at the level of last year – 18-19 million tons. As they say, we will winter in peace.

– And the prices?

– Initially, it was assumed that they will decrease compared to last year. In the south of the country, at the beginning of the harvest, potatoes from the field went in bulk for 10-15 rubles. And when the cleaning reaches the regions of the middle lane, prices will completely collapse. It is clear that because of the drought this will not happen. Both the harvest and prices will remain at the level of last year. And after the potatoes are put into storage, their value will begin to rise.

In general, it is good if the vegetable set for buyers remains at the level of last year. Whether it will turn out so, we’ll see in September, when mass cleaning begins …

The cows are languishing from the heat. All one to one. Fires in forests and peatlands, acrid smoke do not contribute to productivity. The milk yields have fallen, the grass on the walking areas has withered and is not so high in calories, which affects the milk yield. In addition, horseflies get animals in such heat, they circle over the herds in whole hordes.

“All month, day and night, I don’t drive the cows into the room,” said the Dmitrov farmer Ramil Bulatov. – They go to the pasture at 5 am in the morning coolness. At noon they go to a watering hole, there is a pond nearby. They stand up to their belly in water for several hours. Milk yields have decreased, but not very sharply – from 30 liters per day to 25. The reservoir saves. A cow consumes a lot of water, about 20 liters per day, now one and a half times more …

In general, the heat is in the summer, and we will calculate the losses from it in the fall.