October 22, 2014

Over the past 45 days regions of Russia and western Ukraine have received less than 20% of normal rainfall, creating conditions that are worse than the negative conditions experienced five years ago, and threatening fall-sown crops.  The dry weather has allowed for rapid planting with 16.2 million hectares planted – 3 million hectares ahead of last year at the same time.  However, that same dry weather has left seedlings underdeveloped and in poor condition as Russia is beginning to experience ‘very cold conditions’ that are deterring germination of the wheat crop.  Grain crop conditions are appearing to be even worse than in the 2009 crop year which saw a 33% drop in Russian wheat output to 41.5 million tons.  In 2009/10 the loss of production which prompted Russia to enact an export ban and caused global prices to spike was due to crop loss in the winter crop due to winterkill and to losses in the spring crop because of summer drought.  At this point it is still too early to estimate output from spring-sown grain, however with current conditions a smaller than average winter crop is expected.

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