November 22, 2000

WINTER-GRAIN AREA UP IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE, BUT DRYNESS HAMPERS CROP ESTABLISHMENT

Unusually dry weather throughout October enabled Russian farmers to extend the winter-crop planting season and exceed last year's sown area by over 0.4 million hectares. According to a Ministry of Agriculture official cited by the Bridge news agency, 13.86 million hectares of winter crops had been sown on State agricultural enterprises as of November 8, up slightly from 13.42 million by the same date last year. (State farms accounted for a reported 92 percent of Russia's estimated 2000/01 total-grain output of 64.5 million tons.) Winter grains, chiefly wheat and rye, typically comprise 90-95 percent of total winter-crop area. The fall sowing campaign in Ukraine, meanwhile, was finished in late October, with sown winter-crop area for 2001/02 reported at 8.5 million hectares (compared to 7.9 million last year), including 6.9 (6.4) million hectares of wheat.

Soil-moisture models indicate, however, that the persistent dryness which allowed farmers to plant late into the season resulted also in inadequate surface-soil moisture over significant areas of the western former Soviet Union. Conditions were unfavorably dry in mid-October, when winter crops were germinating or in the early establishment stage. The dryness expanded eastward throughout the rest of the month, and by November 1 there was insufficient moisture for proper establishment in the later-planted southern regions. The situation had improved in some areas by mid-November. Precipitation had replenished surface moisture in Belarus and central and western Ukraine, but the prime winter-wheat regions -- southern and eastern Ukraine, and Russia's North Caucasus, Central Black Earth, and Volga Valley regions -- remained too dry for proper winter-grain establishment. [View comparative soil-moisture model results from 1999: October 15, November 1, and November 15.]

For more information, contact Mark Lindeman with the Production Estimates and Crop Assessment Division on (202) 720-0888.