Minister: Russia may harvest over 110 mln tns of grain in 2018

SOCHI, Feb 16 (PRIME) -- Russia can harvest over 110 million tonnes of grain this year, but the result will depend on condition of winter crops and the spring sowing campaign, Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachyov told PRIME on Friday on the sidelines of the Russian Investment Forum.

“Now our forecast for the harvest is 110 million tonnes, but it will be clear in the spring or closer to the summer, when we understand to what degree winter crops survived the winter, when we understand the structure of sowed crops, when we see how the spring field works were carried out. We will adjust our forecast then, we may even raise it,” he said.

“Not a long time ago, we saw a crop of 100 million tonnes as bumper harvest, but we have been harvesting more than 100 million tonnes a year over the past four years, and we had record harvests in 2016 and 2017…But it is clear that we won’t be able to set records each year, as the weather and the structure of crop sowing changes each year.”

He said that 95% of winter crops are now in a good condition.

Despite the lower grain harvest as compared with a record of 134.1 million tonnes in 2017, Russia will remain the world’s leading wheat exporter. “I think that we will be able to keep the leadership at the world market even if the wheat harvest falls,” he said, adding that wheat stocks of about 20 million tonnes accumulated from previous record harvests will help.

The Russian Agriculture Ministry also sees no need to raise the import quotas for Turkish tomatoes from 50,000 tonnes, he said.

Moscow banned tomato imports from Turkey in retaliation from 2016 after Ankara downed a Russian Su-24 bomber. In October 2017, the service allowed three Turkish companies to export 50,000 tonnes of tomatoes to Russia.

“We will look at how the situation evolves, but we have seen no need to raise the quotas so far,” he said, adding that the time period for the quota is not specified.

“So far, we’ve received about 5,000 tonnes. This means that they can supply another 45,000 tonnes more.”

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