Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Russia’s Agriculture Ministry raised its forecast for this year’s grain crop to at least 101 million metric tons, citing a big harvest in the south of the country.

The estimate by First Deputy Agriculture Minister Yevgeny Gromyko exceeds the previous expectations for 100 million tons. Both forecasts are for Russia’s third-biggest grains crop on record.

The improved outlook comes as bad weather this year spurred crop concerns about deteriorating crops in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, and added to volatility in prices. Wheat futures in Chicago, the benchmark contract, rose 24 percent in the last two weeks of June, only to erase most of the gain in July.

“If we work as planned, we will not only reach the current mark,” Gromyko was cited by Tass as saying in Barnaul in eastern Russia. “But aslo, hopefully, do a little better than that.”

Grain crops in the southern Krasnodar region were at a record high, Gromyko said. The country’s grain outlook increased even as the drought in the Volga River area, including the regions of Samara, Saratov, Volgograd and Orenburg, was “unsettling,” he said.

A heat wave has damaged grain fields along the Volga, lasting for about three weeks since mid-June and raising concern that analysts will have to cut estimates for the upcoming harvest.

About 1.39 million hectares (3.4 million acres) of crops have been affected by the drought in the four regions, representing 3 percent of land sown with grains, beans and peas, based on reports from the regional governments. Spring wheat and barley were most affected and were killed in some areas, according to Andrey Zorin, director general of Samara-based Grain of Life Holding Co.