Ukraine grains ‘badly affected by winterkill’

(Agrimoney) – Winter grains in parts of Russia and Ukraine “appear to be considerably affected by frost kill”, in contrast with crops in the European Union which are “generally in good shape”.

The European Commission’s crop monitoring unit, named Mars, said that winter grain crops in north eastern Ukraine and southern Russia looked like they had already suffered significant damage from winterkill, a reflection of poor autumn sowing conditions as well as freezing temperatures.

“These regions were affected by severe frosts until mid-January, when the snow cover was inadequate to protect the crops,” Mars said in a monthly report.

Seedlings were “vulnerable due to their weak establishment as a consequence of insufficient rains and dry soil conditions during the start of the winter cropping season”.

Winter crop fears

The caution is the latest of a series over winter grain prospects in the region, and particularly in Russia, where farm ministry data last week showed that winter cereals production may fall by more than 40%, according to the Interfax news agency.

The crop may fall to 28m-30m tonnes, from 48m tonnes last year, if plants are lost on the 3.6m hectares rated as being in bad condition, Interfax said.

Russian farmers sowed 16.8m hectares with autumn-planted grains for the 2015 harvest, up some 800,000 hectares year on year, a rise encouraged by dry conditions which left crops in many areas underdeveloped when cold winter temperatures kicked in.

While growers still have plenty of time to replant, spring grains tend to have lower yields than their autumn-sown equivalents, and there are worries about how depreciated currencies and tight financing conditions in Russia and Ukraine might affect growers’ appetite for spring plantings.

‘Practically no low temperature tolerance’

By contrast, in the European Union, Mars said that its research suggested “only local and limited frost-kill crop damages in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Poland”.

Indeed, for most of the EU, the growing season so far “has been characterised by overall positive thermal anomalies”.

The downside of the lack of cold is that it has not encouraged plants to harden off for winter, and left them vulnerable should severe frosts arrive.

“Model simulations indicate continued lower-than-usual hardening in western and central Europe.

“Winter crops in the UK, most of the Iberian Peninsula, France, and the Mediterranean region have developed practically no low temperature tolerance.”