Ukrainian agricultural producers refuse from winter barley sowing

Source

APK-Inform

2273

At the beginning of every marketing year, Mass Media often provide the following phrase: fight for the crop. Several years ago, such phrase meant just the process of the harvesting campaign, but in the current season we may use such words with its direct meaning. In the summer, Ukrainian agrarians faced strong droughts, as well as heavy rainfalls. During the market monitoring, experts of APK-Inform Agency realized that Kherson oblast is one of the oblasts, which faced the most sufficient damages from the unfavorable weather. Aleksey Belik, the General Director of Multicom-Holding, which owns lands in the previously mentioned oblast, kindly agreed to tell about the harvesting campaign and share own plans for the future with journalists of APK-Inform Agency.

- Aleksey, what volumes of early grains have you managed to harvest in your farming enterprise in the current season?

In the season, early grains sowings perished throughout almost half of the general areas. Barley sowings perished throughout almost 90% from the general areas. This situation formed due to the unfavorable weather conditions. At first, we faced frosts in the spring, and then the droughts came to our enterprise during three months, there we did not see any rains. Such situation led to the fact that before the beginning of the harvesting campaign, the average yield totaled nearly 10 c/ha. The rains started, when we began the harvesting campaign, so as of the moment of possibility of the beginning of grain harvesting works, there were no sense to bring the machinery to the fields. And to date we simply retill 1200 ha of the sowings.

The area of wheat sowings totaled 1250 ha in the current year. Wheat yield was lower, compared to the previous season. Please note that the average yield of grains, which we sowed throughout the fallow land, totaled 20-25 c/ha. Yield indices of wheat, which we sowed throughout the fields where sunflower was the previous crop, totaled about 10-12 c/ha. The active weed growth is one of the major problems during grains growing in 2010. Weeds sprout in rather fast way, we treated the sowings with desiccants, but they failed to solve the problem.

- What is the situation with oilseeds sowings?

In the current year, we sowed oilseeds rather late. The general sowing areas totaled nearly 420 ha. We sowed in time 120 ha of oilseeds only. We did not keep the terms of sowing dealing with the remaining part, due to the precipitations absence at the reporting period. The soil was dry, and we had no possibility to sow crops. As a result, we hoped that precipitations will start, and thus, we delayed the sowing time. But the rains started only in the end of June.

Due to the formed situation, we could not start using our American seeder, which uses the no-till technologies. Though, we carried out the ground works for the further usage of new sowing technology. We treated the soil with special herbicide Round-up of complete action. However, as I noticed, there were no precipitations, and we could not sow crops to the treated soil. Due to the fact, we planned to sow the remaining sowing area by using the classic scheme. We treated the soil with all necessary agents, but the precipitations did not start going. This fact forced us to leave the area under the fallow-land usage.

- Did you keep all required agrarian technologies while growing early grains?

We tried to keep the required agrarian technologies for grain growing, we treated about 200 kg of fertilizers throughout 1 ha of the sowings. However, when I saw before the beginning of the harvesting campaign that the average yield totaled 10 c/ha, I deiced to avoid handling the fields from the corn-bug. I did not see any point to spend the additional funds, due to the fact that the production expenses will be higher, and the harvest volume will not increase essentially.

- What source of financing did you attract for the harvesting campaign?

Particularly, we used own financial funds, and also attracted bank crediting. Our farming-enterprise did not estimate for the Government support. And actually I am not sure that these programs exist. But the company tried to sign forward contracts with the Agrarian Fund. However, the real deal never took place. We provided all the necessary documentation for the application for signing the contract, we received the answer that they accepted the documents, and to date the Agrarian Fund is waiting for funds from the budget for grain purchasing. But our cooperation did not move further.

- Did you have any problems with machinery during the harvesting campaign?

Yes, we had great problems with agricultural machinery. We felt the machinery shortage due to the harvesting campaign delay in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the combines, which should harvest our fields, stayed there. Accordingly, people who expected for machinery attraction and who even signed harvesting contracts, did not get the machinery in time. For example, the machinery still has not arrived to my agricultural enterprise.

Due to this fact, we had to attract the machinery from our regions. In particular, in my enterprise, 2 combines arrived from Nikolayev and Nikopol.

- What is your opinion to the fact that the Government will probably make the alteration to the current state standard for wheat?

My opinion is that GOST (All-Union State Standard) should be based on the gluten content or on the protein content. To date, the Government may change the standards and work out wheat grades details endlessly. However, there are still certain difficulties with grain classification according to GOST, due to different demands of each buyer. The exporters have the certain demands to grain quality, processors have other demands, everyone is looking for grain which is in accordance with own demands.

- How do you form the policy of grain trade in your enterprise?

To date, our enterprise made decision about restraining of grain sales. Our enterprise is not only the exporter, but also the company is a middleman and forms grain trade lots for the further selling to export-oriented companies, when the demand activity and prices are satisfactory. We mainly use such approach for feed grain selling.

If we talk about milling wheat, I can say that we sell the grain to processing enterprises. In the current year, there is the certain volume of milling wheat in our company, but the volume is lower compared to the previous year. As usual, the processors start to offer the reasonable prices in the certain lapse of time after the beginning of grain harvesting works. Generally; after new crop wheat entering the market, Ukrainian flour millers purchase high-quality grains from agrarians, who are located in the closest location to them. Later the processors start grain purchasing in other regions. As for our enterprise, we cooperate with flour millers from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. I should notice that in the current year the processors are more loyal to grain qualitative indices. To date, they are ready to accept wheat with sprouted grain kernel content to the level of 5%. This situation happened due to the difficulties with grain disclosing which qualitative parameters would completely meet all GOST requirements in the current year. In our region due to heavy rains, quality grains, which according to the gluten and protein content should be referred to 2 grade wheat, became feed grains, due to large quantity of sprouted grain kernels.

- Did you change the list of crops which you will sow for the harvest-2011, basing on this season crop rates?

Due to large-scale crop losses in the current year, we reviewed the list of crops which we will sow. We will not sow winter barley at all, due to big risks during growing of the grain. The grain sowings often dry out or freeze out. The normal yield will probably be once in four years only. We will also change the spring barley growing technology, and particularly we will displace winter barley by spring barley growing. We also plan to add flaxseed to crop rotation. We will decrease sunflower sowing areas. Also about 20% of areas, according to crop rotation, we will leave for fallow land. Of course, on the one hand it is unprofitably to leave so big areas unused. At the same time, on the other hand, during sowing through the fallow lands, the yield is up two times. Wheat sowing areas in the current season will stay at the same level as last year. There are no so serious problems with wheat as with barley sowing. Even despite the weather conditions, which were unfavorable during the period from the beginning of the sowing campaign to the period harvesting works, we harvested new crop wheat volumes.

Finally, I should notice that the current year was very difficult for our region. Even the specialists with a big experience notice that they do not remember time when the weather could bring so many troubles during one year. There could be droughts, or moisture oversupply. But they do not remember time when all weather troubles happened during one season.

Olga Pryadko

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