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Volga Baikal AGRO NEWS Update, In the 2020/21 Season, Russia can Export only 350 thousand tons of Sunflower
USDA Foreign Agricultural Service( FAS USDA) predicts a decline in sunflower production in Russia this year. Analysts believe that its gross yield will be 14 million tons excluding Crimea, which is 9% less than in 2019. The yield is forecasted at the level of 1.71 t / ha (-7% from last year’s level), the area under crops for agricultural crops – 8.2 million hectares (-2%), follows from the August FAS USDA report… Sunflower oil production will amount to 5.41 million tons (5.65 million tons for the 2019/20 season). Export will go to 350 thousand tons of sunflower (1.35 million tons in 2019/20) and 3.1 million tons of oil (3.5 million tons).
Analysts attribute the decline in yield to the July drought and heat in the main regions of agricultural cultivation – in the Center, in the South and in the Volga region. Although the sunflower is resistant to the prevailing climatic conditions, the extremely high temperatures, sometimes reaching 35 ° C, put the crop under stress during the flowering stage. In general, the gross harvest of oilseeds this year in Russia may reach 20.4 million tons, which is 1.3 million tons less than in 2019. In the July forecast, this figure was at the level of 22.3 million tons. The area under oilseeds is estimated at 12.3 million hectares, which is 260 thousand hectares less than last year and 600 thousand hectares lower than the estimate in the July report.
World oilseed production in the 2020/21 season is projected at 610 million tons, which is 6 million tons more than expected in July. Analysts believe that the decline in sunflower production in Russia and Ukraine will offset the growth in soybean production in the United States. Trade in oilseeds will grow by 3 million tonnes to 189 million tonnes on the back of increased soybean exports from Argentina, Brazil and the United States.
Institute for Agricultural Market Studies( ICAR) estimates the sunflower harvest at 13.8-13.9 million tons, but this figure may be adjusted in the coming weeks, says a leading analyst at IKARVadim Semikin. According to him, the decrease in collection compared to last year is due to unfavorable weather conditions in the South, the Urals and Siberia. Certain regions of the Volga region also cause concern. Russian Grain Union( RZS) predicts the harvest at the level of 14.6-14.7 million tons, analytical company ProZerno“Expects a gross harvest of over 15 million tons.
During the conference” Agroinvestor “” New challenges for the economy and the agro-industrial complex “director of the analytical center” SovEcon“Andrei Sizov said that the harvest will amount to 14.6 million tons, but, most likely, analysts will reduce the forecast, as the sown area under this crop was slightly lower than expected.
According to industry analysts, the initiative to increase the export duty on sunflower and restrict its export outside the EAEU in the long term could have an extremely negative impact on the sector and lead to its stagnation. According to the vice president of the RZS Alexander Korbut, farmers will be forced to replace sunflower with other agricultural crops, and there will be no records of production and export of oilseeds.
The radical proposals to close exports raise many questions, Semikin continues. On the one hand, given the expected reduction in the yield, the proposed protectionist policy looks justified for the processors and may pass without any particular consequences. “But if we look ahead, then in general, in our opinion, this measure is very controversial: without an alternative market for the sale of products, agricultural producers will eventually find themselves in a dependent position and may well reduce the area under sunflower,” he commented to “ Agroinvestor“.
Thus, the trend of an increase in acreage and gross harvest, characteristic of the Russian market in the last decade, may come to naught, which will increase the market deficit and halt its development. The utilization of sunflower processing facilities over the past few years, and especially in the 2019/20 season, has grown significantly, despite record exports, which suggests that the industry is quite normal under the current regulatory environment.
The state can help the Fat and Oil Union to stimulate production by paying subsidies, as they are now allocated for profitable soybeans and rapeseed. But the investment attractiveness of the production part will decrease, which means that there will be a constant cry of oil-extracting enterprises about the lack of resources. There can be no processing and export if there is no corresponding production volume of the initial product. And if the Ministry of Agriculture is able to realize its idea that the share of sunflower should correspond to the optimal crop rotation, then there will be even greater losses. But it is good that these proposals are being voiced now: farmers will remember that sales opportunities may deteriorate.
Source: agroinvestor.ru
