Game Changer?

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 11:29 | Categorized as

30/09/13 -- As the Russian and Ukraine harvests remain at a virtual standstill due to heavy rains, winter planting is also stalled.

The Russian harvest was said to be 76% complete as of Friday, that's only up from 70.5% a week previously. The corn harvest has only moved on from 10.5% done to 13.5% complete during that time, with the sunflower harvest progressing from 11.1% to 13.9% complete.

Meanwhile the Ukraine grain harvest is only 71% complete, with just 11% of the expected record corn harvest in.

The President of the Ukraine Farmers Association, UAC, now says around 3 million ha of the planned 8 million ha of winter crops may go unsown this year - and 2 million of that will be winter wheat, he says.

Russian winter sowings are also in serious jeopardy, with less than half the planned area sown so far (7.6 million ha versus 11.4 million this time last year).

Of course they can sow in the spring, if there's enough spring seed available, although at the very least yields will be negatively impacted.