Toepfer: Farmers expect record wheat crop in July

Romania will rank 5th in the top of largest wheat producers in EU and will reduce by a fourth the distance from Poland, which ranks 4th, according to a report released at the end of May by Toepfer, the local leader of cereal traders.

2014-06-10 13:08:51

"There are encouraging signs, but we should not draw conclusions until at least 25 per cent of yield is gathered. Farmers who have not invested in plant protection, technology and treatments will have losses in point of quality because of pest attacks," said Adrian Porumboiu, the owner of Racova from Vaslui group which will harvest wheat from 27,000 ha this summer.

Crop prognoses are made periodically by means of the so-called crop tours, field analyses for the density, dimension and situation of plants or of soil humidity or by means of analyses based on data supplied by satellites.

The plus presented by this year prognosis comes on the background of favorable weather conditions from last fall and from this spring. The only elements which might affect productivity are potential abundant rainfalls during harvest time or very high temperatures in the following weeks.
The large quantities to be harvested in less than a month will allow local economy to use 4 million tonnes of wheat in the international market. Romania will be the third largest exporter in EU and the 11th in the world. The price of wheat from the new crop is estimated at 260-265 dollars/tonne in Black Sea Ukrainian and Russian ports. Data circulated in the local market indicate the high competitiveness of Romanian yield compared to the ex-Soviet one, considering that quantities of wheat from the new harvest have been offered with 180 euro/tonne (245 dollars/tonne at the present exchange rate) in Constanta Habour.

The average value of Romanian what yield was one billion euro in the last 5 years, with peaks of 1.4 billion euro in 2011 and 2013.