BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

30/08/2006

Belarusian farmers should harvest the rest of harvesting areas under grain crops - 15%

According to Deputy Director of central administration of crop science of Ministry of Agriculture and Food Vladimir Kuratnik, Belarusian farmers have harvested all areas under grain crops except the rest 15%.

By August 29, 2006 they harvested 1.860 mln. ha under wheat, that is 85% of the plan.

The croppage of grains in Belarus was 5.416 mln. tonnes, down 796.000 tonnes as compared to the year of 2005.

The state has bought 812.000 tonnes of grains, including 675.000 tonnes of milling one for needs of grain-milling complexes; this is 67.5% of the plan.

Ministry of Agriculture and Food of Belarus also controls the sales of malting barley and rapeseeds on account of government buying. By August 29 the enterprises have sold 38.500 tonnes of malting barley; that is 25.7% of the plan. Also they prepared about 17.000 tonnes more. In total government buying is for 150.000 tonnes. Low sales of malting barley on account of government buying are caused by selecting grain on raw areas of barley production as well as in different enterprises. Because of small size of grains the enterprises should sort it on grain-receiving points; brewing plants receive grain themselves. According to Kuratnik, the processors have the opportunity to select qualitative grain for brewing - in total they collected 258.000 tonnes.

As for the government buying of rapeseeds, the enterprises have harvested 122.000 tonnes of this crop at the plan of 90.000 tonnes. For the moment they sold only 68.300 tonnes or 76% of the plan. In order to speed up its sales on government buying, the decision of prohibition of export rapeseeds from Belarus till the complete execution of the government buying was accepted.

Also Kuratnik has drawn the attention to the necessity of speeding up the works on harvesting garden plots. For the moment they already harvested 29.000 ha of garden plots or 17.6%, and milled 80.400 tonnes of grains at average yield of 27.3 c/ha.

From now on the main attention will be paid to the sowing campaign of winter grains; for them the enterprises have already prepared 748.400 ha of areas, that is almost half of necessary sowing areas. Winter crops have already been harvested on the first 25.000 ha.

Source:

http://www.agrimarket.info/showart.php?id=39079