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Production
Estimates and Crop Assessment Division |
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Production
Estimates and Crop Assessment Division |
November 24, 2003
The USDA estimates Georgian grain production for 2003/04 at nearly 0.7 million tons, including 0.2 million wheat and 0.4 million corn. Unfavorable weather, including severe winter frosts and heavy rain during the harvest campaign, dashed early-season hopes of a rebound from a disappointing crop in 2002/03, when persistent dryness hampered crop establishment and wheat output fell to 0.2 million tons from 0.3 million in 2001/02. (Wheat yield reached a ten-year high in 2001/02 due to the combination of favorable weather and increased technical assistance from international organizations in the form of high-quality planting seed, equipment, fertilizer, and fuel.) According to USDA estimates, Georgia imports roughly 0.4 million tons of wheat annually. Corn production for 2003/04 benefited from generally favorable weather, for the second consecutive year, and output is forecast to match last year's 0.4 million tons. The country imports virtually no corn, and roughly 75 percent of domestic production is used for feed.
Georgia
is situated south of the Caucasus mountains between the Black Sea and Caspian
Sea and is surrounded on the north and east by southern Russia, including a
50-mile border with Chechnya. (See map.) To the
south lie Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The country is about the size
of South Carolina and has a population of approximately five million.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has been marked by
episodes of civil unrest and numerous territorial disputes, poverty, fuel
shortages, and a thriving black market.
Georgia has approximately 3 million hectares of agricultural land, but about two-thirds of this area is devoted to permanent forage crops (meadow and pasture). Of the total sown area of roughly 0.6 million hectares, grains comprise about 0.4 million hectares and potatoes and vegetables about 0.1 million hectares. The area of sown feed crops (alfalfa, perennial grasses, silage corn) has dropped sharply over the past ten years, from 0.3 million to less than 0.1 million hectares. Georgia's primary grain crops are wheat (almost exclusively winter wheat), with average production of about 0.2 million tons, and corn, with average production of about 0.4 million tons. Yields fluctuate from year to year, but average 1.7 tons per hectare for wheat (compared to 2.6 tons per hectare for winter wheat in Ukraine) and 2.0 tons per hectare for corn (against 3.0 tons per hectare in Ukraine). Nearly all the country's wheat is grown in the central and eastern regions, while roughly 70 percent of the corn is grown in the west. In Soviet times, Georgia accounted for virtually all citrus output in the USSR, and and remains an important producer of grapes.
