Farmers in the Rostov region, Russia’s breadbasket, are struggling to salvage their harvest as the region battles a heatwave, frosts, and floods. Rostov accounts for 11% of Russia’s total grain harvest, and the agriculture ministry has said it is monitoring the region closely to make further adjustments to an already soft 2024 crop forecast.
The ministry’s most recent estimate, made in April and maintained into last week, is for the Russian grain harvest to reach 132 million tonnes in 2024 – down 9% from 145 million in 2023, and 16% from a record 158 million in 2022. Last week, Rostov said it was expecting its grain harvest to decline 38% this year to 10 million tonnes, as a blistering heatwave followed spring frosts.
Sergey Sasunov, the chief agronomist of the Rassvet farm in the Rostov region, said the wheat came out of winter in good condition, and the prospects for the harvest were excellent, but now they are harvesting what is left. Sasunov estimated that his farm has harvested only half the volume of last year.
Russia has become the world’s leading wheat exporter under President Vladimir Putin, thanks to massive state support and despite Western sanctions on technology and equipment dating back to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. However, global warming has made harvests volatile in southern regions like Rostov, with extreme weather patterns affecting crop yields.
Fears of lower Russian output helped global wheat prices rally in April, but they had given up much of those gains by June on hopes of better-than-expected Russian yields and higher U.S. production. However, those hopes might be premature as the situation in Rostov suggests that the Russian wheat harvest could be significantly lower than initially forecast.